


mother mother ocean (i have heard you call)

by WhirlyBird70



Category: One Piece
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe, Devil Fruits are actually Devils, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enjoy!, F/F, Gen, Loneliness, Luffy stop believing that strength and love comes with pain challenge., Makino falls in love with the Ocean, One Piece Big Bang 2020, Oop, what more do you want, why yes i did use lyrics in the title i know im uncreative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 39,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24463507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhirlyBird70/pseuds/WhirlyBird70
Summary: “What do you mean I didn’t fight five sea kings with only a dagger? I did!” The red-haired pirate asked incredulously.“Benn shot half of them because you were drunk.”“What? How do you know that! Benn, you swore to secrecy!”“I didn’t tell him Captain.”“Luffy who told you that?”Luffy points to the shore. “She did.”The Ocean’s voice snickers and Luffy mirrors it as the Captain looks between the waters lapping playfully at the shore and the kid with the grin like his captain.It’s a funny look, the kind men get when they see a tsunami bearing down on their head with no hope of escape. The face goes pale and the eyes go wide, and nothing save for the ocean has quite managed to produce this look.The Ocean is most definitely pleased with her child.“Oh hell.” The sailor swears, and she nods her head in agreement.Oh Hell indeed– but he will bring that and more.--Or: There's a devil in Luffy's chest, the Ocean is the Voice of All Things, and Makino balances running a bar and falling in love with the Ocean herself.
Relationships: Makino & Monkey D. Luffy, Makino & The Ocean, Makino/The Ocean, Monkey D. Luffy & Portgas D. Ace & Sabo, Monkey D. Luffy & The Ocean
Comments: 51
Kudos: 414
Collections: One Piece Big Bang 2019/2020





	1. I - Luffy

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer this has not been beta read so PLEASE tell me if you spot any mistakes! thank you! <33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit August 2, 2020: Corrected grammer, typos, and fixed a few sentences for CHAPTER 1.

**I - Luffy**

Since he was born, Luffy has known that there was more than what he could see in the world – that something ever greater laid beyond the horizons that his small eyes saw.

He knew this, because of the voices that rang in his ear, soothing and ever present, that spoke of mystery and adventure and islands and warriors – of ideals and notions that surpassed what humanity could dream of.

Luffy didn’t know the woman in green before him had a name, or that she told him she loved him every night.

(He did register the light kisses upon his head, and squealed every time she gifted them to him in happiness.)

Luffy didn’t know that the gruff, graying man, with shoulders so broad and a voice so loud, would do everything in his power to keep him safe, and told him so in secret moments beyond prying eyes, when he would take his grandson out for a walk in the jungle.

(He did feel the embrace of his arms (but not fists- not yet) around him, and register that in this place, he didn’t have to worry about the armies and dangers the voices whispered to him.)

Luffy didn’t know the last words the man with the tattoos and cloak told him before he left –

( _Grow strong, my son, and chase your dreams. Change the world with your spirit.)_

Luffy did not know, because Luffy’s ears were not filled with the sounds of the world around him, but of the world beyond.

The _Ocean’s_ world.

He was not raised as human, but as a sea soul, who cared not for the singular wave that splashed upon the rocks but for the tsunami that effected the entire world.

Luffy heard stories of pirates, and Laugh Tales, and islands in the sky and sea – he heard the song of a singing skeleton in the mist and the language of a woman he had yet to meet. His favorite song was one no one had told him, and his favorite view was from an island only two had reached thus far.

Luffy knew what the Ocean knew, and what the Ocean knew was not love or family but adventure and dreams and freedom.

Such was his cradle, and such was his fate.

(The Ocean had never had a D in her grasp so young before.

Such was the Will of D, to move even primordial forces)

-

When Luffy was three, and he had almost learned of colors that gave sight and strength and will, and learned of islands that gave adventurers fresh spirit, the Ocean learned something as well.

( _Oh, my Child – How could I have not known that you could not hear of what the Humans call Love? Oh, my **Child -** )_

The Ocean learned and receded, and Luffy spoke his first word as the rush of waves in his ears whispering of stories and treasure and dreams faded for this first time.

 _“Bye-bye_ ” he said to what some would call his first parent, in repetition of what he had heard in his heart a thousand times before.

He startles when the woman in green started crying and falling to her knees on the beach.

_“Luffy – oh Luffy!”_

Her voice is as pretty as the Ocean’s, and her _other_ Voice is just as warm as mountain hearts.

Luffy laughs at her, and stumbles to his feet, making the woman _oh_ so very happy – it’s a feeling Luffy finds he wants to bring to many.

-

The woman’s name is Makino.

Luffy can’t quite say it, so he calls her “ _Ma-ma? Ma-ma? Ma-ki?”_

Her heart feels happy when he does, so he keeps it up.

The Ocean is still there, ever present in the background as he learns from Maki. As he learns to walk and speak, there are whispers of _haki_ in his ears – as he learns to play in the waves and make shell necklaces with Maki, the Ocean shows him the best tide pools to gather the brightest shells.

He says _please_ and _thank you_ with Makino, and _listen_ and _power_ with the Ocean. Every action is accented with the rush of water, and he gets the feeling Makino has caught on that he is not quite normal – or quite human.

Luffy’s learned that as well – the Ocean calls to him and whispers him to sleep as she lets him draw farther from her shores, telling him he’s _Her Child, the Will of D, Listener of the Voice, King of Horizons, King of Waters,_ and the other kids in the village are wary around him as only children can be (still so close to the life that birthed them, unwearied by dreamless adults.)

Luffy however, doesn’t care.

He wants to see beyond the horizon, whatever the Ocean calls him to or whatever purpose she says he has.

Who cares about fate – it has never chained him before, has it?

-

Luffy has a Grandfather, an old man named Garp who tells him to call him Grandpa, but he makes funnier faces when Luffy calls him Gramps or Shitty Old Man, so he calls him those names instead.

His Gramps has seen a lot. Luffy can see it in his eyes, and the Ocean likes to whisper stories about him sometimes, about armies struck down with a single blow, and kingdoms carried to safety in his arms.

Garp isn’t free though, Luffy can see the chains around wrapping and tying him down to some perception of _Justice_ and _good will to men._

Garp wants him to become a marine – and if being chained with Justice written down his back like a burning brand is what the word _Marine_ means, Luffy wants no part of it.

The Ocean approves, and a gentle spray of water caresses his cheeks.

_Good, My Child, be Bold and Free and Unending-_

Luffy snorts.

_Duh._

-

When Luffy was four, his Grandpa threw him down a ravine. It hurt, hurt more than anything Luffy had ever felt before, but at least there was water at the bottom.

The water had always been safe.

He had emerged five days later, scratched and bruised and crying, but the water had led him out to the cove where he could float to shore. He doesn’t remember the days well, beyond little water and bugs for food, but the hand that drifted through his hair and the voice that floated in his mind was always crystal clear.

It still is crystal clear, Luffy thinks, as he sits upon the docks, feet swinging in the breeze. He knows thing he shouldn’t know, knows tales he shouldn’t, and there’s a power at his fist and voice in his head that’s not exactly human.

He doesn’t care.

He’s always been simple – and though he doesn’t quite understand the looks that Makino gives him when he mentions that the Ocean told him something, or that there’s a storm coming, or that he wants to hear a sea story, or mentions haki – he understands that he’s _special_ in a way that few are.

But – he doesn’t care.

 _Silly child,_ the Ocean whispers, voice inhuman and unkind but full of something like love. _You don’t have to care for anything but what you want_.

 _Hm_. He thinks back at her, and goes back to looking for beetles.

-

He doesn’t have a mom, or a dad. He has a Makino though, and a Shitty Old Man, but the kids on the streets tell him that’s not enough so he’s left to play on his own.

Luffy has an Ocean, but the other kids don’t know that.

They think he’s weird when he talks to the air, and are wary of him still.

(He stops talking out loud to her, and ignores Makino’s sad look at his new quietness.)

\--

The shore is his second home, or maybe his first. He finds perfectly carved sea glass and beautiful conch shells on the sand, and gets playfully nipped by small hermit crabs. He sneaks out there more often than not (no one has ever been able to keep track of him for long) and plays in the waves that leave him feeling perfectly refreshed. The sun burns him but he doesn’t mind.

The sea is his home, and it guides him to the best tide pools and the prettiest shells, and away from rip currents that would pull him out to the sea, where he isn’t to go – not yet.

He could never imagine a life where sitting in her waters could kill him.

Now, the Ocean guides him to make a necklace for Makino. Luffy gets the feeling she doesn’t really understand _why_ he wants to make a necklace, but still hows him how to fashion beads in the style of necklaces in the ship wrecks of her deepest waters.

He places it together in the water so the Ocean can guide his smaller hands to place needles in tiny holes on sea glass beads. The Ocean washes away his tears every time he messes up, and collects the beads when they float away from him.

 _Why do you do this?_ The Ocean asks one day.

 _Because I love her_ – and if there is one thing Luffy has never doubted, it is that there are precious few who he loves.

And those few he would go to hell and back for.

The Ocean nods and smooths the stone with calming waves so he can painstakingly carve a name into it by himself.

 _“Oh,”_ He says dismayed at his finished work. “I messed up.”

_It is fine, Sea Child. It’s more fitting anyway._

The name is too big to fit fully in the small sea glass pendant. It’s cut off, and only half way written.

 _Maki_ , The Ocean echoes the name and curiously watches the child run to give it to the woman on the shore.

_Why are you loved so?_

(Luffy hears the Ocean ask, and wonders what she could possibly mean.)

-

For a year now, the Ocean has been telling Luffy of the Red-Haired Man and his exploits – how he almost made it to Raftel, and how the Five Devils want to crown him an Emperor without territory.

He’s a pirate, in the way few are. He wants no territory and no lordship, but booze and treasure and adventure and _friends_ – all of which are a treasure greater than anything else.

_To be free is a dream few can find, My Child. He has attained his freedom – what is your dream?_

_I don’t know,_ Luffy tells her in his head and echoes it aloud. “But I want to be free.”

_Then you will be, My Child_

-

There’s thunder in the air when Shank’s arrive, low and heralding of things more dangerous on the horizon. The wind is so harsh that Makino doesn’t want to let Luffy out of the house, but she can’t get a good grip on him, and he runs out anyway.

She should know by now that the Ocean would never let anyone hurt him.

_(a foolish thought, proved wrong)_

The Ocean had told him that the man from his stories would be here today – the one that is a fool but a glorious one, with battles and scars and dreams.

He stumbles through the rain and slick mud to the eastern cliffs where the ground gives away to crashing rocks and waves a thousand meters below.

There, illuminated by flashes of lighting and rocking in the waves, is a ship with a black flag entering the harbor.

The skull and crossbones are a _sign_ , the Ocean tells him, of a soul’s allegiance to freedom, to dreams, to _life_.

This skull is emblazoned on the sails and flag and the ship itself is just as bold.

 _The Red Force_ enters the harbor, and a smile breaks across Luffy’s face.

 _Freedom_ has arrived.

-

Luffy scrambles back to the harbor, mud squelching between his toes through his sandals and his hair getting absolutely soaked. He’s a mess by the time he enters Makino’s bar and slams open the door.

“YOU!” He calls, and tracks mud across the room in such a mess that only young adventurers can create.

“Luffy!” Makino cries in turn, attracting the attention of every person – every _pirate_ – in the bar. “Where have you been!”

The Ocean _rushes_ in his ears and drowns out her voice. The world tunnels down to the scars on the man’s eyes and the easy grin laced on his face.

“Tell me a story, old man,” He says, and Shanks laughs, bewildered and terrified all at once.

( _Tell me a story, brat,_ Roger had said to him when he was standing on a street corner. Shank’s hadn’t any stories to tell, so he insulted the man’s mustache and took off with his hat, hoping that there was coin in the item.

There wasn’t, but there was a beloved family that came with that straw hat.

This child is a _terrifying_ mimic of his captain and Shanks feels the tremors of greatness rattle in his bones.)

“Ha! Who are you brat? Don’t you know it’s polite to introduce yourself first?”

“No. You’re a pirate. Why do you care about manners?’”

“Dahaha! Brat! The name’s Shanks.”

“Luffy.” The name resounds like a _conqueror’s_. “Now tell me a story.”

And who is Shanks to deny his future king that?

-

Luffy think’s Shanks is both the coolest person alive, and the biggest idiot in the _entire world_.

He tells Shanks as much, and both Makino and the Ocean giggle at the face Shank’s makes, a cross between soft and incredulous and insulted and loving.

(It is a face typical of those who have been touched by Luffy’s entire existence – which is, in itself, revolutionary and whirlwind.)

Luffy had thought, however, that Shank’s would be the same as him.

( _My Child, My King, My Adventurer, can you hear the Voice of the Waves?)_

He’s not.

He doesn’t know why Luffy already knows of islands in the sky and colors of power, songs of Paradise and secrets of the waters near Raftel (a _Laugh Tale,_ how funny). Shanks gives him odd faces with Luffy looks out to the sea and doesn’t look back, like he notices that what Luffy sees at the horizon is more than a pirate’s soul longs for.

(Makino pulls Shanks aside one day, and explains about how Luffy has always looked to the sea, and never anywhere else, how for the first three years of his life it seemed the only thing that he could hear was the sound of waves against the shore and old sea shanties. She explains how she’s caught Luffy coating his skin half in black for only half a second, stumbling, like his teacher (the _Ocean)_ doesn’t quite understand how humans work, and how his grandfather said Luffy had a will like no other.

 _Monkey **D**. Luffy_, she says, and Shanks responds, _I know. But it’s something more than a storm this time, aye Makino?)_

Shanks isn’t the same, and it hurts Luffy more than he thought it would.

It’s a loneliness he gets used to.

(It’s a loneliness that will never go away)

(And it hurts, no matter what the Sea has to say about it.)

-

Shanks says he won’t take him out to sea because he’s a shitty swimmer, but what does he know! The Ocean would never let Luffy drown.

Sides, he has the courage of a man! He can definitely face the world!

He proves that to Shanks by stabbing himself in the face.

It _hurts_ like nothing else has hurt before (except the _loneliness)_ but Luffy tries to not to cry. Shanks’ face is torn between laughing and crying, but he _still_ doesn’t say that Luffy can join his crew even after Makino yells at him and the Ocean douses him with the icky saltwater from below the docks.

Shanks ruffles his hair and puts him up on his shoulder’s though, carefully brushing the bandage on his cheek, so Luffy thinks he can take the pain.

(But, he wonders, doesn’t Shanks understand that Luffy just wants to be _free?_ )

-

When Luffy is seven and a half, his Grandpa ties a bunch of balloons to his backs and flings him off the eastern cliffs of Goa.

It is different from the forest and the wolf’s den, and the gorillas and the time Gramps brought him out on a Marine ship to shoot cannonballs at low-time pirates.

Because this time – this time he’s _alone,_ and the Ocean’s that’s been so close to him all his life is fading beneath the mist below him.

It’s like Shank’s not being the same and the other kids standing away from him, as he lifted farther and farther and farther away from the rest of the world. 

-

It’s not a surprise he’s starts crying, but Shank’s has called him a crybaby, and maybe if he stops crying he’ll come back to Dawn Island and _get him down_ and tell him more stories.

(Tears should never be for yourself anyway, Luffy thinks a twisted thought, they are for friends and people you care about.) 

It’s a day before he stops sniffling, and two before his stops growling and starts hurting instead (Makino said he had a fast meta-whatisit, which means he gets to eat more meat… but there’s no meat up here.) He’s gotten some water from the clouds that swept him by, but it’s just mere droplets to his parched lips. His chest is starting to hurt from the constant hanging, and his toes and fingers are going numb. His skin is burning without question, and his usual deep tan is now cracked and red.

Worst of all, he’s still _lonely_ and his brain is thinking thoughts ( _alone here forever, never seen anyone again, you’ll see the end of the horizon but it won’t be now, won’t be an adventure, you won’t be **alive**_ ) that he doesn’t want to think.

A storm is on the horizon, slowing rumbling around Luffy, and suddenly he can’t _take it_ anymore –

And _snaps._

Something inside him, a fragile barrier between him and dark waters that lurk in the subconscious, irreparably _breaks_ , another barrier that has been shattered forever in his mind.

And the silent void of the sky is filled with noise.

_Child oh child, child of the sea, listen to the sky we are here, breathe child listentousbreathbecomeonewiththeskywiththeworldwithmy **VOICELISTENLISTENLISTENOHCHILDOFTHESEAYOUARENOTINHERWATERSNOW-**_

It’s too much.

Luffy blacks out.

-

_Peck._

_Peck._

_Peck._

Luffy blinks open his eyes to see a bird with the biggest beak he’s ever seen, tapping his face. Its plumage is a startling purple and green, and its flying at an angle so its head never shifts direction.

_Wha-_

“Go-go aw-ay.” He groans shakily. The bird stops pecking, as if startled that its mysterious new toy is awake. 

Luffy spares a thought to be thankful that the bird hadn’t gone for the balloons tied to his back.

The sea is very, very far away now.

(It’s getting harder to breath.)

He drifts for a moment, limbs sore, and head dizzy, wishing the bird had stayed not pecking him so he could go to _sleep_.

**Wake Child.**

_What?!_ Luffy shakes awake. The Voice sounds like the Ocean but _not,_ and it’s terrifying.

There’s a presence around him now, overwhelming and centering in on him. It’s all encompassing, and something in Luffy clicks into place.

_Sky._

And the bird is now glowing faintly in Luffy’s mind, pulsing with concern and anger( _wakeupwakeupwakeup_ -)

It’s different from the Ocean’s voice, though the Ocean encompasses all.

**This is the Voice, Child.**

**The Voice of All Things, present in every force that changes fate.**

**Listen, Sea Child, and _Live_.**

Luffy lives.

-

He’s been up in the air for four days now. The bird has brought him snacks – tiny fruits and berries that are dropped in his mouth because his hands are to weak to hold anything. Three storms have passed by, dropping precious water in his mouth. Still, he is little more than a skeleton.

He’s not so lonely now, not anymore.

Not when the storms he is thrashed around in have a heart, and the sky whispers stories that the Ocean has told him before – something familiar, when he’s so far away from home.

(Makino must be so worried.)

The wind plays with his hair, ruffling it as Gramps does in his softer moments, and the birds talk to him.

(He wonders why they don’t let him down, but the world he lives in only understands survival, not comfort or courtesy.

(He has to learn that later))

The fifth day he has learned to be still, to conserve energy – a stillness that is foreign to him in every way. The breeze is the only thing that sways him, and his eyes only flutter open when the bird – still following, still with his head pointed in the same direction - pecks at him. His mind is growing slower, but he tries to keep talking with the wind and sky and storm.

They are not the _Ocean_ , but they _do_ encompass all, just as the Ocean does.

The sixth day, a balloon pops. The bird has pecked it, but all Luffy can think is _it’s over, finally._

Below, white fades away so that the glimmering view of the ocean is visible. On the blue waves is a speck, heralded with a familiar red stripes black flag.

Luffy would cry if he had any water left to spare.

_Shanks came._

-

Shanks doesn’t normally like kids, but Luffy is hilarious and he thinks he can make an exception. The brat is always going off about being a man, being a pirate, stabbing himself in the face like an _idiot_ and always knowing things that he shouldn’t know – it’s hard not to be intrigued and it's harder not to fall into Luffy’s carefree pace.

(The Ocean, did of course, lead him to this Brat. And Luffy told him himself that he can hear her – This kid’s going to do something, and Shank’s isn’t exactly sure yet what that is, but it’s going to shake the world down to its core.)

So, Shanks doesn’t like kids but Luffy is the exception, which is why he’s currently _furious._

Two minutes ago, Luffy had crashed down from the sky while they were in the middle of the sea, five days out from Fuusha, because some asshole had tied him to a bunch of _balloons._

Now the kids dehydrated and hungry and half dead but muttering about voices in Shank’s arms.

“Kid,” he says desperately, ignoring the sudden smoothness of the waters (as if it was trying to ease the child’s pain by staying still, so very, very still) “Kid, stay with me – you alright?”

Luffy’s eyes are glossy and hazy, seeing things that aren’t there. His voice cracks weekly as he speaks “I’m alright – I’m strong! Like Roger!”

Shanks hasn’t told him about his captain yet.

(The Ocean has hardly told him as well.)

“I can do this the Ocean told – told me I could… It wasn’t scary at all!” Shanks thinks if he was so dehydrated, Luffy would be crying. “Not at all! Not when the birds popped my balloons or when I saw the storm or when everything went quiet and I was alone and it hard to breath – " He breaks off coughing, and doesn’t speak again, sagging listlessly in Shank’s embrace, head lolling against his shoulder.

(He’s never felt so small)

The doctor finally shows up and gets straight to work, pouring water down Luffy’s throat and getting wet rags to wash against the sunburnt skin of being in the air for who knows how long.

Shanks watches in concern as Luffy fist clenches in Shanks’ shirt, and realizes, when Luffy starts muttering to people who aren’t there, that he would do anything for this kid.

_Damnit Luffy, why?_

-

So.

Monkey D. Garp likes to throw his grandchild out to sea, does he?

Shanks is going to _murder_ him the next time they cross paths.

(Garp could throw fists with his captain, but Shanks could do that now if he wanted to.)

-

They reach Fuusha in a week, thanks to a freak storm that the Ocean tries to guide them away from. ( _The Sky and Wind and World are **angry** for this Sea Child.)_

Luffy spends the entire time half in bed, pressed against Shanks side as he tells him stories (some that even the Ocean hasn’t told him yet), and half running around deck, swinging on the rigging and pestering every crew member who looks like he’s resting.

All of them _adore_ Luffy though, so it’s not as if he’s bothering anyone.

By the time they arrive in Fuusha it is dusk and Luffy has worn out his energy for the day. He’s held on Shanks’ hip, head mushed into his shoulder and arms dangling limply, completely trusting that Shanks will keep him up.

“Come on Anchor. Let’s get you home.”

There’s a mumbled protest, but Luffy’s only big reaction is curling closer.

And so, a herd of pirates, keeping quiet for one small, sleeping child, stumbles through the doors of the Party Bar.

Makino’s there, looking suspiciously like she had been expecting them, with glasses of beer laid out on the counter already and a small glass of orange juice with a straw right besides them – for her wayward child, Shanks presumes.

“M’lady,” He says, jokingly in an effort to lighten the concerned frown on her face. “We have a present for you.” He hefts Luffy in his arms.

Her face softens and she reaches for him. “Thank you,” She says, in a way that conveys more gratitude than that. “Garp had tossed him out five days before you found him, and he hadn’t eaten at all before then.”

“A trial through fire then?”

“Tough love.” She responds primly, and it’s almost enough for Shanks to forget that she knew when Luffy was found, though Shanks hadn’t told her.

He remembers Luffy babbling about wind and sea and sky, and sees the beautifully carved sea glass necklace adorning her neck with a name ( _Maki-)_ etched in child’s writing in the center.

He decides he doesn’t want to know, and lets her take Luffy.

“We gave him food and water and the such, and Doc here said he’d be okay after a week. Just make sure he’s not going to crazy a’ight?”

“Of course, Captain. Though I’m sure with his favorite pirate crew staying in port he’d be happy to sit and listen.” The undercurrent of her words speaks of what she knows Shanks will do to Garp if Garp comes back to chuck his grandson out to sea again – connection to the Ocean or not.

“I’m sure we can spend a week on land – right boys?” Shanks calls loudly to his men who cheer before Makino shushes them silent, gesturing wildly to the boy in her arms.

It’s too late. Luffy blinks blearily awake and says “You’re staying?”

And Shanks can’t tell that hopeful, disbelieving face _no._

-

Shanks is staying! Shanks is staying even though he said he would just be dropping Luffy off! Luffy gets to spend another _week_ with Shanks!

He tells the Ocean so, when he finds a quiet place away from town, out on the Eastern Cliffs. No human voice reaches his ears and the only souls to see Luffy are the Sea and Sky and Wind and Earth.

(Ever since the storm, the Ocean has been speaking so much _louder_ now, and everything _else_ has been thinking too. It makes Luffy want to run away, and he doesn’t, just leaves when the voices get loud, louder, loudest-

He tried to explain it, once, to Shanks while they were sitting on the docks, when Shanks asked what he was talking too, and why all the other kids avoid him.

“The Ocean is the Sky.”

“What?”

“Like – like the Ocean’s there right? And she’s really pretty and she doesn’t really understand anything when she’s the _Ocean_. But she sees a lot more when she’s the _Sky_ or the _Wind_ or _anything_ , and sometimes her voice gets all messy and it’s not really her voice and –” His voice is running as he tries to explain it right to Shanks so Shanks won’t _leave_.

“Bud. Is that why you ran away?”

“Pirates don’t run! And I didn’t run! It just got really loud” He trails off. “The dog had a voice like it was all happy and everything even when it was growling. It was scar- it wasn’t scary! Not at all! Just everything’s so _loud_ now. Because everyone’s talking.”

“Hm.” Shanks hums and hugs him close to his side. Luffy doesn’t think he understands, but he’s not leaving, so he can keep on being this kind of lonely.)

The Ocean hums when he tells her the news, and the grass by his feet sways in excitement.

He can’t _wait!_ Now that he’s been on a real-life pirate ship, Shanks has got to think he’s a man now! He can finally be _free!_

(Back at port, the Ocean is deadly calm compared to the crashing waves at Luffy’s cliffside. The Red Hair pirates are bringing a chest down, one with a _demon_ inside, and the Ocean does not want _that_ in her waters.

The men place the chest in the Party Bar and she can finally _breathe_ as well as a primordial force can.

The damned fruit hadn’t fallen into her waters after all. She wasn’t _tainted_ by that filth.)

-

Shanks doesn’t think Luffy’s a man because he likes his juice. _Loser_. Juice is great!

He’s laughing at him and turning to Makino to ask for more beer while Luffy fumes at his side.

He doesn’t want to be angry, though not when Shanks and Lucky Roo and Yasopp and Benn are here.

_What makes me happy… meat!_

There’s no meat. Luffy frowns.

(The Ocean is thrumming in his ear, a steady presence, like a guardian angel for him and him alone. He can’t imagine his life without her thrumming gently in his ear, just soft enough to let the rest of the world in.)

There is a chest near him though, with a peculiar noise sounding from it.

A call, like Luffy has head from only the Ocean before.

( _but this voice is not of the Ocean.)_

He reaches for the chest and heaves it open, no one seeing his actions.

There’s a swirling dessert inside, delectable and tempting.

(Luffy hasn’t noticed the Oceans panic, how she has frozen in his ear when she saw that _thing_ in his vision)

Luffy reaches for it, hearing a siren call in his ears. It’s hard in his hands, like good fruit, so he pops it in his mouth.

It’s disgusting, but he doesn’t notice because for the first time since he flew into that storm and _snapped_ it is quiet.

_Where’s the Ocean?_

He swallows the fruit and suddenly there is _pain_.

The Ocean had never crushed him before, despite her presence dwelling deep in his bones, because she calls him _Sea-child, my child, Hearer of Waves,_ but now she’s like a tsunami is bearing down on his bones, because there is something else within him now.

Something _dark._

Luffy doesn’t notice his voice breaking as he calls out or all the people in the bar stopping to look at him. He can’t notice anything past the thrum of pain in every vein, past the world breaking out in white bright lights of color and black blurring on the edges of his vision. Fingers feel as if they are numb and pinned, every joint like a nail has been drive through. Something is twisting around his heart, grasping and controlling and _squeezing,_ and he can’t _breathe_.

The Ocean rages, and what finally makes him black out is the _hate_ he feels.

The world fades, and all he knows is despair.

-

He wakes to pain, and the feeling of being stretched too thin. He’s being held again, a familiar theme of late, but it just hurts. Luffy groans, and tries to stem the urge to cry out.

(He can already feel the tear tracks on his face)

Again, there’s that silence.

(Where is the Ocean?)

Instead of rushing waves, all he hears is something akin to an animal crawling around his chest.

Now, Luffy is not ashamed to admit he is _terrified._

He looks up at Shanks, familiar scent recognized, and buries his head in his shirt. “Wha…?” He trails off, everything hurting too much to speak right now.

“Shh,” Shanks says, and Luffy stiffens because there’s an undercurrent of rage that Shanks is trying to stifle. “No – Lu – Anchor, I’m not mad at you. Just… do you know what that fruit was?”

He doesn’t – the Ocean doesn’t like to talk about things outside of her control (she is a jealous, jealous soul).

“It was a Devil Fruit, kiddo, the Gum Gum Fruit.”

“Mmmhm?”

“It means you’re rubber now. And you can’t ever go in the water again.” His voice is low, as if to break the worst news in Luffy’s entire life as easy as possible.

It still hurts.

“WHAT?” He cracks, then tears up as everything hurts again (it’s like a _vine_ is crawling up his throat.)

Shanks places him on the bed – his bed, the one in the attic, the one where he can see the Ocean from – in order that he can look him straight in the eye as they sit side by side.

(Luffy misses the hug already.)

“Devil Fruits are weird fruits that give you powers – they are mostly found in the Grand Line, and can be very dangerous. They give great powers but they come with a price – they say the Ocean hates Devil Fruit users, because they dared to go beyond her power, and tries to drag them down to the sea. Saltwater saps the strength of Devil Fruit users. It means you really are an Anchor now.”

Luffy can’t speak, because there’s a demon inside his chest now, one given from his fruit that he just starting to figure out.

_(yes Sea Child I see the water in your bones but you are mine mine mine mine)_

The Ocean doesn’t like Devil Fruit eaters just because they went beyond her power – it’s because they _oppose her_ , challenge the very thing that makes up the world they stand in.

As Luffy is finding out, as the Devil Fruit inside him settles and rips out every essence of the Ocean in his soul.

-

It’s hard to acclimate to sudden difference. The Devil Fruit (himself now, he supposes) mutes every soul around him. Just as he was getting used to how the voices shouted over each other sometimes, the way the Ocean, (The _Voice)_ was in every breathing (and unbreathing) thing, he is shut out and cast towards the great unknown.

(Sometimes, when the longing gets too much, it feels like he’s burning from the inside out)

He’s alone, again, and maybe he has Shanks and Makino but he wants the Ocean too.

(He’s heard Shanks and Makino talk at night, about how he is so listless and keeps on trying to go to the Ocean, which violently tries to rip him out to sea and _burn_ him, sap his strength – to tear the devil out of him. Shanks’s captain could hear the Voice Luffy heard, if later and differently than Luffy – but Shanks says his Captain didn’t have a Devil Fruit. That it’s different, again, and that he had never heard of Demons in devil fruits.

The unknown has never scared Luffy, but to a child, the knowledge that what you love hurts you is very terrifying indeed.)

“Maki,” He asks her, using her nickname. “Why won’t the Ocean talk to me anymore? Why doesn’t she like me?” And he _knows_ why, it’s because he’s too weak to this demon in his chest and the Ocean hates any creature that revolts against what is sacred (Holy Ocean, Holy Water.)

Makino’s face softens into something resembling pity as she bends down to him. “Oh Luffy – I don’t know.”

His shoulders droop and her face hardens. “But I’m going to find out - this isn’t your fault.”

That night Makino goes out to shore and doesn’t come back for two days, dripping water from her skirts with the wrath of storms in her eye.

She doesn’t talk about it, so Luffy continues to go on his daily life, longing for what he could never have again. 

(Because now the Ocean _hates him_ )

And then the bandit walks in, and Shanks – who was teasing Luffy like he was normal, and not some demon dwelling freak that even the Ocean hated – lets him walk all over him.

Lucky Roo and Yasopp and Benn and _everyone_ all laugh but Luffy doesn’t _get it_.

It’s like the world has been turned upside down -who doesn’t fight when someone does this? When did Shanks become a coward?

(If the Ocean had been listening instead of seething in hurt at her Sea Child betraying her and letting a _devil_ nestle in his chest, she would have corrected him. The Ocean’s rage is a powerful, powerful thing, but only when provoked. She is uncaring, but her fury is a thousand-foot swell to a soul in a rowboat – there is no mercy for fools, but she does not anger for the rowboat, someone so far beneath her. She angers for the challenger, who is worthy of her rage – not someone who doesn’t have a _dream_ to swim her waters with)

Luffy yells, upset, and runs out. When he comes back, Shanks has gone, sailed away again ( _An errand, later today Anchor, something small, we’ll be back)_ and Luffy is all alone.

(And worse than before.)

-

The bandit shows up and mocks Shanks.

Shanks, who had let the bandit pour drink all over him.

Shanks, who teases Luffy about being a little kid and drinking juice.

Shanks, who saved Luffy from the punishment of the sky.

Shanks, who listens and gives the best hugs, and is the first friend Luffy has had in a _long_ time (ever) that isn’t the Ocean or Makino or Gramps, who tells him stories and carries him to bed.

Shanks, who seems to care despite how _weak_ Luffy is.

Luffy yells back at the bandit, and there is shattered glass on the ground and the cold barrel of a gun pressed to his head in the next moment.

The last thing Luffy sees before the bandit drags him out the door is Makino’s scared face as she’s held back by the other bandit’s crew.

Luffy looks at her and tries to smile.

He’s not afraid.

(He can’t be, because while Shanks says he’ll find _family_ out on the sea (when) if he ever becomes a pirate, the Ocean has already abandoned him. (Why do people always leave? Can’t one just stay?) Which means that this loneliness that is constantly _crushing_ him might be forever – and he can’t stand that, he _can’t_. So, he has to not be afraid of being alone, just in case it lasts forever.)

(Because everyone always leaves)

~~(he’s terrified)~~

-

Shanks – Shanks is _there_ , and while the Ocean may be just as calm as ever, (she doesn’t care anymore, because Luffy messed up, because Luffy is _weak_ -) Shanks is there, back from his voyage.

Face pressed into the dirt, Luffy can’t help but smile past the tear tracks going silently down his face. The bandits have been beating him up for the last hour – chucking him through buildings, kicking him, laughing when nothing seems to hurt, and laughing harder when they realize sharp things do. Luffy’s been giving back as good as he can, with punches and boards and sticks but it’s no use (he’s too _weak_ -); and everyone just watches.

No one tries to help, but Shanks.

(The Ocean watches apathetically as Luffy bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.)

“Shanks!” he cries, uncaring because he’s _here._

The pirate gives him a smile and turns to the bandit, who is pronouncing himself as Higuma, and ordering his men to attack the pirates.

Shanks asks a question, one that stills the crowd around them.

“Now that you’ve pulled your gun, are you prepared to do it?”

The bandit isn’t.

Lucky Roo is.

 _BANG!_ Goes the pistol, and all Luffy sees is the spray of blood as the bullet goes through the bullets head. _BANG!_ Goes the pistol and bits of brain and body and blood scatter around the pavement (some on Luffy’s _hands)_ buts what’s most prominent is the little voice inside the man – the one inside everyone that sings of sea and soul and where thou once came – is silent.

 _BANG!_ Goes the pistol and Luffy sees a man die in front of him that day.

( _My punch is as strong as a pistol!_ He would bluff, but his fists haven’t killed anyone yet.)

Shanks glowers, not even flinching as the bandit falls to the ground or at the cries of unfairness from the bandits around him. “We’re pirates – there’s never a fair fight at sea. And – “Shanks nods his men forward. “You can spit on me, poor drinks on me, call me names that you wouldn’t even call the ugliest souls of hell but – **_No one hurts a friend of mine.”_**

Benn takes his club and Luffy is smiling as he takes down the bandits.

Shanks is his friend –

And Shanks is gone, as the bandit drags Luffy through smoke and dust to the sea

_No-_

_-_

Here’s the funny thing about the Ocean.

She is steadfast in her nature and passion and soul. No one can stop her, or chain her down, predict her or anything of the sort.

But, occasionally, there will be an event that _shifts_ how she perceives herself and she will _change_

(It has happened twice before, with men of hearts with sea with beaming smiles, and it will happen thrice as well)

This is one such event. 

(Devil fruits are born of dust and greed and terror. They are one of few things in this world not born of the sea, with the sea’s soul in every vein and heart. They are foreign to the Ocean, whose darkness is not darkness of the heart or soul but of something more primal, unlike these fruits which take and corrupt till there is nothing left. Unlike those fruits which devour their user, so that all they could hear was the voice of a _fruit_ , calling to them.

Once upon a time, the Ocean did not hate those who dared to have powers beyond mortal comprehension.

Once upon a time, there were not demons and dark hearts hiding in side of them.

Once upon a time, the Ocean did not drown those she might have loved.)

She wishes her Sea Child had not betrayed her, she wishes she still loved him. But she can’t, not until she _drowns_ that _hideous_ thing in his chest out, even if it kills her beloved child. There will be more to hear her song and voice, and her Sea Child will simply become lost in the way that many do.

(The woman, _Maki_ , had come out to sea and screamed and yelled and raged until the Ocean could not help but wonder at human love. Could she not see the devil inside the heart of the boy she was trying to protect?)

Then.

Luffy falls into the water, forced by some evil hand.

(The _bandit-)_

The Ocean is about to take her chance when – there is _terror_ from her child, like she has never known before.

The waters rage and fruit merges with human heart.

She will not let her child _go._

_-_

The bandit kicks Luffy off the tiny boat and into the waters of the bay.

The immediate lack of strength does not terrify Luffy (he’s used to it at this point, Makino has to stop him from trying to reach the shore now) but the shadowy figure _behind_ the bandit does.

It is hard to hear the Voice of the Sea and of the world now, with the Gum Gum Fruit tying tangles around his chest, head and heart, but Luffy can hear this Lord’s voice.

( _hungersmallchildforbloodoflandthatdoesnotdwellinthesewaters)_

The Lord of the Coast bites the bandit in half, then another time to get the rest.

(Luffy has seen two men die today.)

(He hopes there isn’t a third.)

It has been a minute in the water now, some miracle holding Luffy up as the sea king tears through a human man, but with that survival comes _pain._

(The Ocean doesn’t like what is not of sea and salt and wind)

The fruit _revolts_ against the water around Luffy, the water _in_ Luffy from the sea’s presence there, and all he knows is _white hot agony,_ like barbs and needles and lava sinking into every pore of skin in unending torment. It is something that a child will never forget (the water _hurts, why me why-)_ – pain stays when all else fades.

This time is no different.

The Lord of the Coast does not care for children in pain and the Ocean hating her own.

Red eyes turn to Luffy and lunge, white snatches of teeth glistening in the salty spray.

His eyes go wide and in the midst of his terror and pain, something _snaps_ like it did when he was facing the storm.

_NO!_

The world goes silent as the pain _stops_ and the bay goes calm. His will, like the tsunami, floods the bay into calmness. Electricity hovers in the air, and _nothing_ will be the same again. The voices of the world scream in a young mind for one clear second before dulling, quieting. Eyes open and never shut again.

(In Goa, away from the little boy in the bay, the people stumble from a force greater than their own.)

A crash, and The Lord of the Coast is limp in the water.

( _a storm, aye Makino?)_

“Anchor…”

Strong arms grab Luffy from where the blue water has slowly been swallowing him whole. The scratchy beard and voice are so familiar that Luffy would cry if he didn’t _hurt_ so bad.

(the Ocean had never been scary before.)

“Sha-anks…” He mumbles, briefly registering that the pain is ebbing away. He relaxes, slowly, as he is pressed closed to a pirate’s chest. The bay in turn relaxes from its frozen stillness, and waves again. Shanks glares at the stirring Lord of the Coast, and it swims away.

It is just Luffy and Shanks in the water which is bloody but moving and unhurting.

“King’s Haki… Anchor do you know what that is?” Shanks says into the top of his head, which he nods.

The Ocean had told him of souls who were so powerful that their will could flow out of them and into the world around them. Luffy hadn’t known he could do that.

“Sha-anks…” Luffy says again, so tired and the aftershocks of fear dripping down his veins.

“I got you bud, come on- “

_Child._

( _There are Souls so powerful_ , the Ocean had said, before, _that they can influence the world and give life to ones Will. This Will can change even the most powerful of forces –_

 _Even you?_ Luffy had asked.

_No Child, no one has impressed me enough yet to bend me to their will. And no one ever will.)_

_Child, I am Sorry._

The Ocean.

 _She’s back –_ is all Luffy can deliriously think as he finally sinks down, letting a hand trail from Shanks’ neck and into the water instead, like an old friend greeting another.

_You’re back._

He doesn’t forgive her, because to him, who has been hurt by almost all who have loved him, there is nothing to forgive.

_You love me._

_Of course, my child._

_-_

Devils are cowards. They sink in and hide and that it why the Ocean – bold, unstoppable, who makes up the world – _hates_ them. They crawl up men’s throats from their hearts and choke them deep, systematically ridding the ocean from human skin and soul. 

The price of power is a soul, a devil’s deal that no one ever knows unless they love the ocean like the ocean loves the sun.

They never let go – never, ever, _ever -_ but.

The Ocean can learn.

The devil inside Luffy’s chest bleeds, cut open by the force of a conqueror’s rage, and the Ocean sinks in.

-

Shanks leaves a week later, because Gramps is coming back, and despite the fact that Luffy hasn’t let him out of his sight since they got back to sure, he’s doing alright.

(A Conqueror, one who could shape the Voice of Eon’s to echo his own, force the devil to _obey_ and the entire fucking Ocean to play nice.

Shanks looks at the tiny seven-year-old who clings to Shank’s pantlegs and fights the urge to bow down where he stands.

_A king -)_

This time, Luffy doesn’t ask Shanks to stay, but asks him to play and have fun and tell him more stories when he comes back. Shanks nods, like he wants to say something but changes his mind.

 _The Red Force_ leaves, narrowly avoiding _The Doghouse_ on its way out of the bay and the consequent battle between two power houses over a little boy who would shake the world.

(If Shanks had to have Luffy cry into his shoulder one more time because of his _Grandfather…_ War be damned Shanks isn’t a brat anymore. Garp would get what was coming to him.)

They leave and Gramps comes back, meeting Luffy with a hug and a blow to the head. When Luffy’s head snaps forward with a rubbery _twang_ Garp freezes.

He’s been around the world, traveled the seas for decades. He knows what a Devil Fruit is.

And he knows they _rarely_ appear in the blues.

“Luffy,” he says, bending down to his grandson’s height who looks at him warily, holding his head. “When did you eat a devil fruit?”

Luffy keeps quiet, doesn’t even try to lie as his eyes cast downward. His fingers twitch and grip his shirt as Garp stares him down.

(Garp knows the secrets of the deep, has been looking into them ever since he knew Luffy couldn’t hear his name when he spoke to him but could the Ocean’s call.

The Ocean _hates_ Devil Fruit users.)

“Oh, Luffy.” Garp sighs, and drags his grandson into an uncharacteristic hug. “I’m sorry.”

Luffy doesn’t say anything back, only grips tightly to Garp’s shirt and doesn’t let go. Garp’s shirt grows damp, but neither of them say anything.

(Because Luffy had never known love without pain, except maybe Makino’s, so he loved his grandfather without question, and he loved the Ocean, but sometimes Luffy wanted to learn what being gentle meant.)

-

Garp trains him that weekend, but only for a little bit. Otherwise, he watches in curious amusement as Luffy splashes in shallow waters and sinks in deeper ones. Luffy winces as he is submerged, like the water burns the way pressure on sunburns does – enough to hurt, but a discomfort more than anything.

(Garp sees the way Luffy talks to the Ocean and doesn’t say anything, so he doesn’t say anything when Luffy clenches his chest sometimes and says _no_ in the tone of untrained kings. He’s just grateful the Ocean hasn’t destroyed his Grandson entirely (though according to Makino, raging in the back of the Party Bar, it nearly had.)

So Luffy unlocked his conquerors, aye? Wonder how that happened.

In any case, Garp’s not surprised, and simply glad it’s helped dull the demon writhing around Luffy’s heart.)

Luffy is overjoyed, because Gramps treats him to a feast of jungle beasts and watches the sunset with him and lets him talk and talk and talk to the Wind and Sea and World.

(It’s harder, now, so very hard, like his ears are muffled and covered and everything’s blocked out. He has to work to hear the Voices now instead of them just whispering in his ear like a constant shadow. It unbearably lonely, sometimes, and Luffy feels so so _so_ small.

He wishes he still had the world screaming in his ear sometimes. But at least the dogs are so scary anymore.)

At night, Garp carries Luffy back to town from the tops of Goa’s mountains. He wonders, as cool sea breeze blows up from distant shores to wash against Luffy’s cheek, what will become of his grandson. Luffy…

He loves the sea.

And now his skin is pink from light burns scattering across his body.

It hurts, for the beings you love to hate you.

(Garp thinks of a freckled face so full of hate, and sighs.)

Luffy is small in his arms, seven and fragile to an old man who has destroyed kings and emperors with but one fist. Yet – Garp knows his grandson will be great.

Conquerors is bleeding out of Luffy every time he speaks, every time he splashes in the water, like a cocoon trying to protect him- and failing, judging by his pink, slightly burned skin. There’s a devil in him now, and Luffy’s will is trying to kill it.

Garp can only hope that his grandson does.

Now. Where did he get that scar under his eye?

-

Garp leaves, not knowing of red-haired pirates yet he tells his grandson to watch out for pirates all the same. He’s only spent three days with his grandson, but Makino is giving him glares when Luffy keeps on clinging to him, so it’s time to go. Can’t have Luffy getting attached after all, he has to learn to be strong!

And the brat’s father is causing a ruckus in the Grand Line, which he has to sort out.

Damn idiot son.

Luffy waves from the dock as his grandfather’s ship fades into the distance. The Ocean is speaking to him now, as she never seems to stop anymore, wanting to make up for what she has hurt.

_Child?_

“Hi.”

_Would you like to hear a story?_

“Yeah!”

He sits on the edge of the docks, water lapping at his feet and drawing him into a sort of drowsy state, as the Ocean before him whispers stories about conquering kings.

For if Luffy must hear her voice clearly again, he must know how to suppress the devil in his chest.

-

Shanks comes back, exactly a week and a half later like he said he would. No one had ever been this consistent in Luffy’s life. It’s almost like a miracle.

Shank’s steps foot on the docks and immediately sweeps Luffy up in his arms. Luffy laughs, full of joy, and in the quiet moments between breaths hears the Wind laugh with him.

“Anchor!” The man happily says, concern wafting over him as he eyes the pink tint to Luffy’s arms. “How you holding up?”

“Good! Gramps didn’t hit me much at all! It was awesome! And he let me play in the water and we had steak and we got to go on a hike and – “Luffy rambles to his idol, motions excitedly flashing about as rubber limbs are sent flying. The Wind is laughing in his ears, louder next to Shanks, and this close to the Ocean he can feel her presence so strongly as salt spray stings his skin.

He’s _happy,_ truly, especially now that Shanks is _back._

“Dahaha! Sounds fun, Anchor, but what about your devil fruit?”

Luffy slips out of Shank’s grip and runs towards the Ocean in lieu of telling him.

The water is cool against his feet at first, but quickly turns to burning water – She’s trying to hold back, Luffy knows, but it’s hard.

The Ocean is the Ocean. Small things do not come easy, and the devil inside him _fights fights fights_ against the saltwater in his bones. He knows this, now, in the way the Ocean whispers to him at night when even Gramps is asleep, the origins of the world, laid bare for a seven-year-old mind to comprehend.

Of course, he doesn’t care.

Only cares that one day he’ll be strong enough.

“See Shanks!” Luffy turns to him, beaming, standing in the shallows, “I’m Stro- “His strength leaves him in a moment and suddenly he is _drowning._

But there is a strong grip on his arm and a man pulling him out with a glare. _“Luffy!”_ Shanks squawks, panic receding from his eyes as Luffy is pulled out of the water.

Oops. Did he scare Shanks?

The Ocean giggles _Shishishi!_

Huh. Guess he did!

“Don’t do that Luffy! The sea it – “

“The Ocean doesn’t hate me! She said she’s sorry, she’s my friend still!” Luffy cuts him off with a bold protest.

Shanks sighs. “Fine. Whatever – don’t go in the water though, okay? It’s giving you burns. We gotta talk about that bud.”

“Why?”

Shanks stares at him, eyes wide and sadness pulling in him. Luffy doesn’t quite get it, because the Ocean could never truly hurt him.

(But marks of loneliness marring his heart prove she has.)

Shanks doesn’t give him an answer. Luffy finds he doesn’t need one.

(He always hurts for the people he loves. Why is the Ocean any different?)

Benn walks back with them as they take the long route to the Party Bar, peaceful moments overshadowed by small burns on a child’s body. Luffy doesn’t seem to mind as he regales Shanks and Benn with the stories the Wind told him, asks them about their latest trip, if they brought back anything.

(They hadn’t.)

“Shanks,” Luffy says abruptly from a few paces ahead where he had been running. Adults were so slow, weren’t they? “Can you teach me Conquerors Haki?” That’s what the Ocean had called it. To Luffy, it’s the thing that makes the world become _clear._

(Shanks stares, because Luffy says it so easily, like a child asking for training in the way of kings isn’t some grand feat.

And, perhaps for this child, it truly isn’t.)

“Why?” Shanks asks, in the echo of Luffy’s same question. This time, Luffy has an answer.

“Mm. It’s nice.”

Shanks doesn’t ever really understand, as much as Luffy wishes he could. Anything more and he just gets this confused, worried look in his eye which is _dumb_ because the Ocean is the only thing that Luffy has ever truly known, so why can’t Shank’s _understand?_

He thinks he might have to beg and he _will_ but –

Shanks looks at Benn then back to Luffy. “Sure.”

Luffy answers him with a smile, and laughs at the grin Shanks gives back.

-

His first lesson is in the Party Bar, because neither Shanks or Luffy have ever had the presence of tact in their lives. Makino is at the beach, an explanation of _a conversation_ all Shanks gets as Makino presses four kiss to Luffy cheeks on her way out the door, and the crew is as rowdy as ever. 

“Now, Anchor.” Shanks begins, Luffy seated next to him at the bar. His arms are wrapped in light bandages to keep him front scratching at the burn salve, but it is keeping his attention that will be the real struggle.

(Luffy looks at him with wide, trusting, adoring eyes, and Shanks realizes this kid will never not pay attention to him)

“Conqueror’s Haki, King’s Haki, the Haki of Emperors, whatever you want to call it – “

 _Will,_ the Ocean whispers, unbeknownst to Shanks, and Luffy smiles.

“—Is the haki that focuses most on your _will._ It’s you and your spirit telling the rest of the world what you will do – how fierce your spirit and unstoppable determination are. It is your heart and soul acting as one that make the fiercest of Conquerors the most powerful. A Conqueror's Will is the essence of kings”

“But I don’t want to rule. I just want to be free.” Luffy objects, frown crossing his features.

“Ah.” _Just like Roger, aye?_ “A king isn’t always about ruling. It’s what you make it. Anyway – a Conqueror's Will is what gives conquerors power, but only if they apply it to others.” Shanks laughs at the frown still on Luffy’s face. Heard this before, hasn’t he? The Ocean telling him or some shit like that?

Well.

The Ocean is more than a conqueror ever will be (save for one, whom she has bowed to already) but she can’t use the Conquering will. She acts in fear, not love or awe or devotion or domination or the terror of man being strong as the forces of nature.

“To use Conqueror’s Haki, push your will onto them.” Shanks winks, and turns to the crew.

**_KNEEL._ **

The command echoes through the bar, knocking pirates into their drink left and right. There are a few left, who simply laugh, used to their captain’s antics, and a few who give their captain a frown. Shanks shrugs at them and looks at Luffy, whose staring with wide eyes.

(Shanks knows, knows the way the Will of a Conqueror has been bleeding out through the seams ever since Luffy used it that first time. It’s like a broken dam with no solution but to let it all flow, and the only thing that seems to be keeping Luffy from crying out to run and drown into the Ocean. A Devil in his chest, Luffy had muttered, crying in his sleep, and the Will of Conquerors is the only thing that seems to make it quiet.)

“Wanna try?” Shanks asks with a wink as Luffy’s eyes, if possible (yes, with his devil fruit) grow impossibly wider. A feral grin crosses the younger's face, and he turns to the crowd.

At first, nothing happens, but Shanks knows what the quiet before the storm looks like – when the air is still and the wind seems to have stopped moving for all but a moment.

And then -

**_KNEEL._ **

(And Shanks’ knees _shake_.)

It’s nothing like Shank’s haki, this explosion of willpower from this child. It's less of a command and more of a fact. Awe is the only emotion Shanks can bear to feel as shivers race down his spine – this child feels like the _Ocean_ and her unbelievable power.

Terrifying, awe-inspiring, all-consuming, ever-loving, ever-destroying – a contradictory force that is all a man should know in the world.

The bar falls completely silent as all but Shanks fall unconscious.

Luffy himself is dazed, head dizzy and world spinning, the will that had bled out of his body too much for even him.

He slumps into Shank’s shoulder and mumbles. “Did I do it?”

Shanks can barely find his voice as he looks at the child who reminds him of something like his captain. “Yeah, Anchor. You did.”

(The sun is setting. The Ocean is quiet. A Town has fallen to a restful sleep.)

“Say, Anchor, have I ever told you about the Pirate King?”

-

Every child knows about the King of the Pirates, dead and treasure long labeled as legend, but few know him as Luffy does. As a mentor to his own mentor, a man brash, a man brave, a man caught in the Ocean’s sway almost as much as Luffy.

A man, according to Shanks, who let nothing stop him, not even death. A man who was freer than the ocean winds, a man who was the freest in the world, if only for a few, short, years.

( _No one ever wanted to leave him_ , Shanks implies in his words, _for as much as he was reckless and hated he was loved by those who cared._ )

A man, a legend, who was _King_.

(That is what Shanks tells him. The Ocean tells him of a man with a will greater than most, a man who heard her call and turned all but the tides to his will. A man who was free to keep what he loved safe, a man so bold and brave and loving, a man who dared to achieve the impossible.

A man who went on a never-ending adventure and sparked an era with his death.

A man of dreams.)

(Luffy wants that.)

-

The lessons continue as do spouts of unconsciousness. Shanks does not train him entirely, but shows him how to force that Conquerors Spirit _inward_ to the beast Luffy swears is choking him from the inside out while turning his limbs to rubber and making him so _weak._

It works, for moments when the world isn’t clear and Luffy has to shove his fruit _down_ with conquerors so he has a hope of hearing those voices in the world around him.

It’s enough to keep his soul from leaking out at inopportune moments, enough to give him clarity in a world that seems to confuse him at every turn.

(He’s tempted to ask Shanks to teach him more, but something in him stills. He’s already tried to coat his hands in black with the Ocean’s guidance, the Wind whispering to him how to be alert without seeing, and he knows it’s possible to forge ahead on his own.

Luffy wants to follow his own path, not Shanks'. He wants to see the world for himself, not know it all already through stories from others, even the Ocean, even Shanks. 

Conqueror's was enough.

Now, it’s time for Luffy to figure it out.)

They are able to sing sea shanties now without Luffy’s head hurting, all the pirates telling him stories of men who have gone long before, adventures on the High Sea, all approved by the Ocean herself. Its joyful, laughter in the air as men slur their words and jump on tables. The Red Hair pirates have never been phased by much even a Conqueror, young and in the making.

Somehow, it almost feels like an end as Shanks spends more time away from the bar to walk upon the shores with Luffy.

As Luffy’s Conqueror’s makes things clearer and makes the burning dampen just a bit, the duo plays in tide pools and the shallows. Luffy points to crabs and tells Shanks about all their dumb gossip as Shanks stands in the pools with Luffy in his arms, safe from the water. The Wind sings in their ears and the Ocean laughs as they play with her crashing waves upon the shore.

They dig their toes into the sand and watch the sunset. Luffy asks Shanks about the end of the world, the end of the Ocean, expecting no answer, and asks about paths to the sky and the bottom of the Ocean.

The Ocean has told him her secrets but – there’s only so much the Ocean can explain to a _human_.

Sometimes, adventure is held in the heart of dying men. It’s the only thing man has that all things wish for – mortality. A question of _is this the end_ , when flying above the clouds, and the rush of _it isn’t_ when your crew is laughing after.

Shanks is going to leave to chase that, Luffy knows. Luffy’s going to follow him out there – to the sea and never look back.

“Shanks,” he says, leaning on the man as he reaches toes closer and closer to the water. “Are you happy?”

Shanks looks at the setting sun, fire glinting in his hair, and smiles. “Yeah, Anchor. I am.”

The sun sets.

“Shanks. I know what I’m going to do.”

The dream of a king becomes reality, with only a man and the ocean as witness.

_A new era begins._

-

“I’m not coming back Anchor.”

“I know.”

“Yeah. You know why?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think you’ll forget.”

“I WON’T!”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I WON’T! I’m going to surpass you one day! I’ll be a great pirate by then! I’ll be KING OF THE PIRATES!”

“Well then… if you’re going to be our king… do me a favor… Keep this hat safe for me. This hat means a lot to me. Promises that you’ll give it back to me, when you’ve become a great pirate, alright?”

_Shishishi!_

(He will be _king_ -!)

-

Shanks is gone and Luffy has a hat. He’s lonely now, but no lonelier than before. Perhaps even less because _now_ he has a dream more than the Sea and a promise to keep and voices whispering in his ear.

He’s going to be _king_ and Shanks might think he’s weak now, but he won’t be soon enough. He’ll get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and-

 _The Strongest_.

(The Ocean has already bowed to him, hasn’t it? What is to say he can’t do anything else just as daring? Just as impossible?)

He’s going to be _King of the Pirates!_

He tells Gramps as much, and Gramps tears him away from everything he has ever known. The Ocean disappears from his sight and her voice is a little weaker, a little more distant and it _scare_ Luffy, but he can’t let Gramps know.

Gramps will just hit him.

(The Ocean goes away, and Luffy feels the devil in his chest bleed out a little more. He wonders if Garp has noticed his haki yet.)

Up on the mountain in the jungle that seemed so scary when he was two and three and four and five is a bandit hut. Luffy doesn’t care for the bandits (hates them, really, but his dreams are filled with bandit bodies crunching between sharp sea king teeth, so he finds there’s just fear when he thinks of them instead) but there’s another kid here.

One that spit at him.

Luffy’s never met another kid before beyond visiting merchant kids in the village.

(This child, Ace, his grandpa says his name is, reminds Luffy of the man the Ocean whispers about. The last man who listened to her, who wasn’t caught up in her sway for good. More however, is when Ace tilts his head and looks like the woman that the Ocean wishes for, the Sea Storm.

 _Son of a King,_ the Ocean whispers, but Luffy has only ever cared about one title and that is his own.)

Luffy looks at Ace and realizes, as his grandfather leaves him in this all-consuming, monstrous jungle, that he won’t be alone.

_He won’t be **alone.**_

(The Ocean is still learning to love. The Ocean is not human. The Ocean has never been alone, and thus cannot understand. Luffy loves her, and she loves him back but – it’s not always enough. It hasn’t been enough since the Ocean went away. Luffy hates it)

Ace hates him, but that’s okay. Luffy will make him his friend. Eventually.

-

Ace runs and Luffy chases. Dadan gives Luffy shitty food and he’s slowly starving but he’s learning when to fight and when he can aim his arms (so much harder now that he’s rubber) and when to bite for the sake of a morsel of food.

The Jungle and the Wind are Luffy’s help now – they guide Luffy through the paths Ace took, warn him when rocks tumble down from mountain tops and what bugs aren’t safe to eat.

(The Loneliness presses down and doesn’t let up, and it _hurts._ )

Ace drops him down a ravine once.

(Ace tries to kill him but few things in Luffy’s life haven’t, so it’s all right. It’s normal, isn’t it?)

Luffy lives because he’s rubber and because the Wolves are loud in their Voices and their Growls. He runs and gets caught and runs again. He hurts, but eventually the wolves are behind him and the mountaintop insight.

The bandits bandage his wounds and send him to bed.

Luffy feels cold.

(He hasn’t seen the Ocean, felt the Ocean in weeks. It’s odd, not having the force of the world in her entirety at his back. He’s her parts, her soul, in the Winds and Jungle and Earth but it is not enough.

It’s never enough, for a child of the sea.)

He feels lonely, less so when he chases Ace.

It’s the only comfort he can find in these mountain hills.

-

It takes three months for him to finally catch up to Ace. In that time, he wanders the hills, starves a little, and listens to the wind blowing through the trees. At night he can’t sleep because despite being surrounded by people, Ace throws daggers at him in his sleep and Luffy feels so, so alone. It’s like the world is crushing in on him, and everyone’s leaving.

(He hasn’t quite figured out why people keep leaving, leaving him behind. Ace runs into the woods, the Ocean separates herself from him, Gramps leaves and so does Shanks. They all have their reasons, but Luffy can’t help but wonder if one of those reasons is _Luffy_. He’s just not strong enough.)

Lullabies whisper through the bandit walls however, born of the Voice of the Ocean but not Ocean Luffy keeps hearing. The bugs chirp at night, bringing with them emotions and the secrets of the jungle as the growls of the beasts, the Lords of the Mountains echo through the forest. At times it is too much and at other times it is too little. Luffy has to find the balance that allows the Voice of the World to dim but keeps his devil fruit locked in his chest and not ripping out the bit of Ocean he still has in him.

He’s seven years old, and doesn’t really get things like balance and focus, but he does get quiet and _sleep._

Luffy has and always will be a little pragmatic bastard. He does what he needs to do.

(Ace wakes at night when Luffy’s using his haki and doesn’t go back to sleep.)

-

He grows stronger and stronger and stronger, and learns the way of the jungle. Knows the way the trees whisper, recognizing him from another, and the way _this_ part of the jungle is different from the other. The Ocean is on all sides of the mountain, so the Wind can’t guide him to her by any one path, but Ace can – and it’s truly Ace he wants to get too.

Soon, he catches up, and it’s the first time he’s ever caught up to someone who wanted to leave him.

It’s a nice feeling.

(He can see the Ocean now, who gets a bit rougher upon spotting her child.

 _Hello, My Child,_ she whispers, longing and happiness in her town, and Luffy gives a _Shishishi!_ right back.)

It’s even better when he finds out that Ace and his friend, _Sabo_ (Luffy wishes he had friends like Ace) want to be pirates too.

The Wind laughs joyfully in his ear, as if they knew all along – they must have, because the Wind cares for human affairs more than the Ocean for while the Ocean carries human hearts and souls the Wind carries the voice of human song. They hear the dreams of _every_ human and carry them to every ear – Luffy knows this, because they have told him as much in the form of legends when he’s huddled in the hut during a storm.

Ace and Sabo are strong, stronger than Luffy and easily tie him up. He’s heard something he shouldn’t have, which isn’t new, and now he’s trapped again.

(Luffy thinks of bandits and Grandpa flying him out over sea and thinks he needs to unlearn the meaning of fear.)

“We should kill him,” Ace says and Sabo agrees.

(Ace is like fire, his Voice angry and hurt and lashing out against everyone but Sabo. Sabo is just the same, tampered by the need to survive, but just as willing to through caution to the wind and _hurt_ because no authority can trap him now. They aren’t good kids, not at all, but Luffy thinks they are the kind of kids he can understand.)

Ace doesn’t kill him nor does Sabo because they don’t know how. The Ocean hurts but it won’t kill Luffy, and no pipes hurt either. Ace gets ready to use his knife but uses it to cut the ropes instead because someone is coming.

Someone _bad,_ who the trees of the forest anger against. Luffy hides with Ace and Sabo as the men pass by – looking for the treasure Ace and Sabo has.

But Luffy never knows how to stay hidden (people might forget him, _leave him_ ) and is out of the bushes, asking these men who they are and what they want with Ace.

The men (snarling inside, malicious and cruel) ask Luffy a question he knows the answer to.

He can’t tell them. Ace might not like him then, might leave him, and he can’t have that happen – can’t have Ace not ever give him a chance to be his friend or even simply be with him – but Luffy can’t lie.

Instead, he doesn’t speak, like the Ocean when Luffy ate that horrible horrible fruit, and Porchemy takes him away.

Sabo and Ace watch from the bushes, and Luffy finds he doesn’t know if they will come after him or not.

(People rarely come back to him.)

What comes next is pain and a maelstrom of the Ocean’s wrath.

Porchemy knows he’s rubber and does not use blunt things that would leave not even bruises. He ties Luffy up, stretching his arms, which aren’t used to being stretched for that long, to the ceiling and attacks with spiked gloves. The spikes pierce him, riddling him with holes and gashes, going through his limbs at some points and simply sticking there in others. Luffy is bleeding and crying and the world cries with him.

The wind rattles at the door and the Ocean’s waves rise to untold heights. Luffy thinks about using his conquerors to make Porchemy stop but he keeps on thinking that if he just knocks them out, Ace and Sabo will think he spoke. And when Porchemy gets back awake, he’ll keep punching.

_(There is no end, not yet, I can’t do this I can’t I can’t)_

The Ocean begs him to, _rages,_

_(RISE SEA CHILD AND FIGHT FIGHTFIGHTFIGHTSAVEYOURSELFMYBELOVEDCHILDIWILL TAKE THIS MONSTERS AND DROWN THEM IN MY WATERS!)_

But Luffy doesn’t.

Instead, the pain becomes no more than the burn of the Ocean – another obstacle he has to overcome to make people _stay_ , to prove Luffy isn’t weak.

(Maybe that’s the real reason he doesn’t use his conquerors, so untrained when effecting others. He wants to be strong.

Maybe this will make him strong?)

Porchemy gets bored eventually, eyes cruel as he stares at Luffy.

“Fine.” He snarls, and Luffy knows this is the end. One of his lackey's hands him a sword. “Let’s finish this since the brat won’t talk.”

He’s about to die, but Luffy’s too tired to care. Maybe he’ll get to be with the Ocean now, and explore with her, dance in her depths and sing with the Voice of All Things as those before him have done.

 _BAM_!

The wall smashes down and two figures charge out. Through the blood covering his face, Luffy sees who they are and smiles.

(It’s nice, not to be abandoned.)

-

Ace and Sabo are not gentle and never have been (never will be). They take Luffy down roughly and make him walk back, only helping when he stumbles far too much. Luffy’s covered in blood and worsening cuts by the time they make it to the new safe house in the woods and are able to bandage his wounds.

All the while, Luffy realizes Sabo and Ace are the second coolest group of people Luffy has ever met (the first being Shanks and the Red Hair Pirates of course.) The Ocean might rage about how they treat him, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

He’s crying, because being locked up with blood rushing in his ears about to _die_ but being unable to say a word, because dying is better than being alone, is _terrifying._ He’s only seven and tells Ace and Sabo so when they mock him for crying (Shanks told him it was okay to cry) but quickly shuts up.

(There are still tears, left over from the stinging cuts and holes in his body. He’s woozy, but hopefully not to much – he needs to make it back to the hut after all and the Wind can only do so much to keep him upright.)

Sabo and Ace maybe be cool but they are also kind of dumb. They don’t get why Luffy’s thanking them and Ace is confused why Luffy wants to be with him.

Isn’t it obvious?

“BECAUSE I GOT NOBODY ELSE!” Luffy shouts through his sniffling tears and maybe what he explains after ( _Being Alone is worse than being hurt – He wants Ace to live_ ) gets through, but…

They don’t really get it. Luffy is starting to think that nobody ever will, not even the Sky or Wind or Ocean, but that’s okay.

It has to be okay.

At least Sabo and Ace let him hang out with them now.

-

Life in the jungle isn’t so bad with tangible friends to help you. Ace and Sabo and Luffy fight and tease and rough house and eat weird things in the jungle – they invade Dadan’s hut and steal gold from thugs at the Terminal and have Crocodile for breakfast lunch and dinner. They sneak into High Town where the voices of all the people are stilted and wrong, and get caught by Sabo’s dad, but that’s alright.

In the end – in the end they stand on a clifftop and declare their dreams to the world.

Suddenly, Luffy’s dream isn’t just for himself or for Shanks – it’s for his brothers and for their dreams. Luffy’s going to be free _with_ them not _without_ them.

He loves it.

(The Ocean _laughs_ when he declares his dream to the world (It’s not just Pirate King, not anymore) and the water at the cliffside _rises_ in an anthem of sea spray and joy. She approves of her child’s dream and of his companions. These Sea-challengers are _worthy_ )

(Ace and Sabo give the Ocean odd looks as Luffy echoes her laugh – _shishishi! –_ which just makes Luffy laugh harder. He’ll tell them eventually (and hope they understand.))

But it isn’t the end.

Ace pulls out the sake and three cups, and suddenly Luffy feels something settle in his chest. It’s not his devil fruit but it’s something surer than that, something anxious that is no longer so.

_Don’t you know? When men share a drink, they become brothers! No matter where we are or what we do – this bond will never be broken!_

Luffy has brothers now, and that tells him he will never have to be alone again.

-

Sometimes, Ace and Sabo can’t help but notice how _weird_ Luffy is sometimes. How he’s able to dodge attacks he shouldn’t have seen coming, or how he talks to the air and laughs at nothing. How at night there’s something riveting in him, calling out to whoever will listen. How, when they play in the springs, Luffy’s feet come away burned and pink, a thing he hardly notices but Ace and Sabo see with rapt attention. How Luffy knows things that they don’t (Makino’s visiting today! Sky islands are real!) and seems to be worldlier than they have ever been.

Sabo and Ace don’t get it.

They don’t think they ever will but – Luffy’s their brother. They love him even if they say nothing of the sort (because boys of the wild believe more in actions that words) and so they will accept him.

Still.

Boys of the wild are also curious creatures, and a mystery is a mystery.

-

Sleeping in the tree house is not the best sleep Luffy has gotten _ever_ but it is among those nights. There’s no Ocean lullaby but if he climbs to the lookout post he can see the Ocean and wave. The tree’s rock at night, swaying the tree house ever so slightly with it, and the wind whispers through the floor planks telling Luffy bed time stories that he doesn’t hesitate to yell at his beloved brothers.

“Didya know there once was a guy who went to the sky? Lots of guys actually? And they sang all day long and the bell rang and it was super pretty and they were best- “

“Luffy!” Ace slams the pillow onto Luffy’s face, shutting him up effectively. “The hell you talking about? Island’s in the sky aren’t real, who told you that shit.”

“THEY ARE REAL!” Luffy screeches back, slapping the pillow into Sabo’s face in turn. Sabo makes a face and quickly pushes Luffy onto Ace as Luffy keeps yelling. “The Wind told me! And the Wind doesn’t lie unless they’re telling a lie! They are nice like that!”

Sabo halts in his actions of pulling at Luffy’s stretchy arm, Ace in turn stopping his foot from pressing into Luffy’s chest.

“The wind can’t talk Luffy.” Sabo says, staring at him with the kind of face he only gets when a scheme is in the works. “It doesn’t have a mind or a tongue or anything like that.”

(Sometimes there are words in the trees at night. Sabo and Ace meet the others eyes and never say anything. It still happens.)

Luffy looks at them like they are the most idiotic people on the planet. “Of course they do! They are the Wind!” Luffy knew they wouldn’t understand but still. He has to try.

“Everything has a voice because everything’s the Ocean.” He says it likes it fact, like someone will believe the words that spill from his tongue like some prophet, but his brothers don’t believe in fate. “The Ocean has a really pretty voice.”

Luffy thinks they might like the Ocean’s voice if they could hear her, but it’s not a matter of want to hear but need to hear.

(Luffy hopes his brothers never need to hear her voice because if they do, Luffy knows he will never, _never_ see them again until the Ocean claims him for her depths as well.

A fate that will come sooner or later if he does not challenge her.)

Ace gives him a look, like he wants to believe in the way that children believe the tales of sea-worn sailors. A look that says _wouldn’t it all be okay if it were true?_

Sabo clenches his hands in his pillow and looks like he’s come across something wrong with the universe.

(The Ocean has ways of communicating to those who don’t hear her voice. Luffy knows this in the way Makino walks upon the beach and Shanks looks at the sails of passing ships and halts his own. Luffy wonders how the Ocean spoke to his brothers as they were lost in the chains of people.)

(Garp tells stories when the drink has loosened his tongue and Sabo has long since learn that knowledge is power and digs his hands into any far-off book about the Grand Line that he can find.

Both tell of men lost to the sea.)

(Is Luffy lost, or was he ever found to begin with?)

“Alright, Luffy…”

“It’s true!”

“Sure, little brother, but tell us when she speaks next time okay? Maybe me and Ace can hear her next time.”

“But she talks to me all the time! Or most of the Time! A lot! Right now,”

_Your brothers are delightful, Sea Child._

“She says you’re delectable!”

_Shishishi!_

“Uh… Okay Luffy.”

They sleep, and Ace and Sabo watch the breeze tuck their baby brother into bed.

-

Knowledge is an irreversible change. To forget is a crime, and Ace and Sabo both know that some things shouldn’t be forgotten.

(Luffy forgets names at the drop of the hat and seems to remember everything differently. Still, they know that if they were to ask Luffy could name every sunrise and sailor’s tale that had a shred of truth in it. Luffy knows as well, of course.)

When they learn what Luffy hears, they pay attention and Luffy pays attention right back.

Luffy giggles when Ace and Sabo have been silent far too long, and ventures off when Ace and Sabo break in their daily fights, adventure calling him forward now that his brothers are done with their entertainment. Sabo learns that Luffy needs a hand around his wrist when his eyes go all far away and Ace learns that if you let Luffy be silent long enough around a meaty campfire, he’ll have a story to tell afterwards.

When the nights get stormy, winds rage against their tree top home (chosen for its view of the Ocean) in some playful manner they never did elsewhere, as if home itself when Luffy’s there is an adventure. The fire burns brighter when Luffy breaths in and dimmer when he breaths out, keeping in time with a life Ace is learning to treasure.

Life is fiercer when Luffy is around, but it's fit for boys who want to travel the world.

Luffy speaks aloud more often, words tumbling out in odd moments, such as advice for punching when the forest is quiet, or awe at a tale in a fight only he can hear. His eyes do not go wide when he hears of Sabo and Ace’s parentage, because the Ocean has told him of blood and other things that do not matter in the face of a being older than the world itself.

(After all, Roger could hear the Ocean. He was her last Sea Child after all, this Luffy knows. But Ace? Ace will never know the embrace of a voice like thunder, not like Roger did, not like Luffy does.

Luffy thinks that Ace would never want to anyway. His brother has never been one for things outside of his control.)

(Ace claims Luffy and Ace claims Sabo with vows of brotherhood. Nothing else he holds so dear than the family he _chose._ )

They are wild boys, wild children, children who have long shed society for what it was and sought freedom in the hills. They are constantly covered in bandages and have no qualms in holding back their hits.

In the jungle of Goa, pain is survival.

 _Anywhere,_ the Ocean who has never yet known gentleness, says, _pain is survival._

This does not stop Ace and Sabo from trembling from Luffy’s blast of haki when the fruit in his chest stretches too high or he lets his latent haki relax. It does not stop them from getting used to the constant pressure of the presence of their little brother, that slowly fades with the day, and it does not stop them from taking note of their little brother’s devil fruit.

 _It’s rubber,_ they say, _it’s stupid_ , and don’t talk about how it flashes with black sometimes and how the wind guides Luffy’s fists to aim true in moments where otherwise would be death.

The Ocean agrees with them because She hates the devil in her Child’s chest, but this is not the thing that concerns Sabo and Ace.

Sabo knows books, and knows that Devil Fruits do not burn.

Luffy burns.

They try to keep him away from the water, but their brother wanders around with pink tinged skin more often than not.

(Sabo doesn’t know why, can’t figure it out, and Luffy goes quiet when prompted, that strange presence Luffy calls _Will_ strengthening around him when he asks but –

Ace knows the wilds and knows the way nature works.

_Luffy’s like the Ocean, isn’t he? Right down to his soul. And the devil hates the ocean. Maybe his fruit hates him too.)_

(Maybe)

-

With his haki drowning the devil in his chest, Luffy find he breathes a bit easier and can hear the world a little louder.

Now he knows for a fact that this is something no one else has. That the Ocean speaks to him and him alone and he and he alone responds, and he thinks it must be a little lonely then.

(Did she get sad when he talked last, when the words of humans quieted his own to her? He doesn’t know, but speaks a little louder (because he brothers will never drown _his_ words.)

(right?)

He treasures the gift she gave him, and hears his brothers voices louder than anyone else.

(He didn’t know humans could speak like that, feel like that, shout and scream like that, believe like that until he met his brothers. Until he at his fruit, until his haki made the world go quiet, until the ocean went away. It’s easier, with his brothers, too feel it all.

He wonders what Shanks sounds like. What Makino sounds like. He wants to know.)

 _(Like adventure and hearth,_ The Ocean says, and doesn’t say which person she is talking about.)

Where Ace’s actions are loud, Sabo’s are quiet but where Ace’s _voice_ is quiet, not quite believing he should be heard and full of anger at himself, Sabo is _loud_ and unyielding, demanding that the world see him and that anger directing outward.

His brothers’ voices are angry, but Luffy thinks they might be getting happier, if only a little bit.

(Luffy wonders if he even has a voice or if his own voice is simply drowned out by the world around him.)

-

Luffy thinks that maybe, with his brothers on either side of him, grinning happily in the sunlight, he could be happy. Not lonely for once, and forever after.

And, as the cool drink of stolen sake runs down his throat and warms his chest, he thinks he will never be lonely again.

_Brothers no matter where we are!_

Its good and the Wind and Sea and Ocean and Sky and _Voice_ echo in his head and are happy with him.

His brothers are tangible and real and never go anywhere without him, never leave him for something else.

It’s the best thing in Luffy’s entire life, he thinks, because the Ocean doesn’t have any stories to whisper about Sabo or Ace like it did with Shanks, no questioning gazes with Makino or disgruntlement with Garp.

Ace and Sabo are _his_ like nothing else has ever been.

Until they _aren’t_.

-

Sabo disappears one day and if Luffy knew that would be the last time he saw him he thinks he would have looked at him a little longer. A little more carefully. Fought a little harder.

(Did something to make him stay stay stay stay _stay-)_

Instead Sabo leaves despite his voice _screaming_ so loudly out of his body that he’s unhappy, that he doesn’t want to be trapped in that awful, awful kingdom, that he wants to stay with his brothers.

Instead, Sabo leaves and Ace won’t go after him despite Luffy _telling him_ shouting at him, screaming at him that Sabo is unhappy. That being left in that place is like death itself or worse.

(Luffy doesn’t quite know what’s worse than death, but has a feeling it has to do with the dagger that twists in his chest whenever the world goes silent.)

Sabo leaves and doesn’t come back and the tree house is lonely.

So very lonely.

And Ace thinks Sabo is happier there which can’t be, it _can’t be_ –

And it’s not.

-

When the Terminal is lit on fire by a man playing pirate, Luffy finds that the Ocean doesn’t have much to say to him, much to cast her waters upon the shore and _save_ him and Ace from these burning, burning flames.

It’s as if there’s something else controlling the winds that night, something dark and deceitful that steals the Ocean away from her one Sea Child.

Luffy is scared but the absence of the Ocean is what makes him hurt.

He supposes he must get used to it now.

But – bold and unyielding he can feel Ace beside him, unwilling to back down and helping Luffy _through this_ , through this raging fire and ropes and –

Bluejam.

There’s a sword to Luffy’s head and blood on the ground, and Ace is raging but Luffy sees the man coming behind Ace and –

And –

And –

**_KNEEL._ **

The Ocean is not here, so Luffy must protect his own.

The men fall, struck by the tangling presence that usually writhes in Luffy’s chest, and the world goes quiet. The man with the sword behind Ace falls, and Luffy has never quite been so happy as he Is now.

His brother is _alive._

But he’s also on the ground, unconscious, and the fire hasn’t stopped.

The world’s hazy, but Luffy will save Ace. He has too. He _has too_. Even if the other pirates rise up and start shakily fighting again, even when Ace gets up too and struggles to break free from Luffy’s rubbery grasp to fight, even when the Bandits burst through a wall of fire and carry him out.

He will keep. Ace. _Safe_.

(He’s done it before, with someone else, with the force of his will, and will do it again.)

(Even if it’s at the cost of himself.)

-

Sabo’s dead.

Sabo’s dead.

Sabo’s _dead._

The words ring in Luffy’s ears like and unending bell, like a cacophony of lies and wretched truths mixed together in some unholy thing.

Because, because, because Luffy has always known people, and those closest to him have a presence. Some unforeseen force and the Ocean _tells him_ about the few people he loves in his life, like stories about Shanks from across the seas and what Makino did by the beach that day, and if Ace slept through the night or if Sabo stayed up.

Luffy knows things and he knows this.

Sabo _can’t_ be dead, because the Ocean tells him he isn’t ( _Sea Child the Bandit speaks lies lies lies lies lies-)_ but Luffy can’t hear his voice anymore.

He can’t hear Sabo, can’t hear his rage at the world, can’t hear the soft beating of his heart no matter _what_ the Ocean says and.

Sabo isn’t here.

Luffy breaks.

-

_Sabo’s dead._

_Sabo’s dead._

_Sabo’s dead._

The bandits say it like an unending echo, a scream that nearly drowns out the ocean. Luffy felt cold while Ace was missing, and now that cold has turned into a numbing freeze because his brother according to the world is _dead._

And Ace is tied to a tree.

A _tree._

Luffy doesn’t eat, and the voice of the world grows dim.

(If he had been more than this he would have likened the experience to when he was lost in the sky. Lonely and lost and full of rage at things he can’t control and totally unknowing of what could possibly come next. A breaking point about to reached and a storm about to come. He doesn’t like it, never will.

The Ocean wants him to _live.)_

It feels like his fruit is choking him in his grief, so similar to when he first got it. It’s so hard to hear the Ocean when his world – part of it at any rate, his beloved brother, _Sabo_ – is missing and fallen away. Every breath feels like its ragged, like his limbs are being strapped down and lost, like _loneliness_ in one of its sharpest forms.

(Morbidly, as tendrils of vines swallow his longs, taking desperately needed breath and will from him, he wonders what he looks like, on the inside. Garp mutters about him having water in his veins, as does Sabo - _Sabo no oh god Sabo –_ and Ace, but Luffy bleeds red. He thinks. It feels like there’s something in his chest in place of his heart, and perhaps it’s his fruit. Perhaps Luffy on the inside is just water and fruit and the emptiness where a brother once was. Perhaps.)

(Or maybe he’s just human like the rest of them, and everything is in his mind and heart as it is for everyone else.)

The fruit chokes him, Luffy is sure it is his fruit, but between not being able to breath sometimes and the _pain_ that comes with thorns running through his body, he finds he does not care.

It’s hard to reach out when he’s being swallowed whole.

-

On the seventh day, Ace breaks free from the tree and snatches the letter Dogra just brought in.

(Sabo had helped Luffy with his reading, though his wasn’t the best either. Running away from home at five will do that too you)

It’s from Sabo and Luffy will never read it.

Ace runs.

Luffy wonders then, as Ace’s voice grows with rage at himself and everyone else, why people leave. Why his big brothers get so angry at the world, what Sabo did to deserve _this._

Ace breaks free of that damn tree and reads that damn letter as Luffy still thinks and thinks and thinks on some abandoned cliff side that not even Ace knows about.

(How could he, when he doesn’t know the Ocean’s call?)

He is a child born of sea and storm. He finds he has no interest in deserving or need or want. The world is the world, and Luffy finds he does not care for the majority of it.

(The Ocean has never cared for every human that walks upon her waters, only a select few. _Hers_ and no one else’s)

Sabo is _his,_ Ace is _his_ , and Luffy doesn’t care about the world only _his._

(He is the Ocean in more ways than one.)

Luffy’s brother won’t die. They won’t. They _won’t._

(Something snaps as _Ace’s_ voice wavers across the island in the most mournful, rageful cry.)

The Ocean is all knowing and whispers a secret into his ear, one he can hardly hear and one he can hardly believe, but one he knows as _truth_ in his heart.

(What would happen if the Ocean wasn’t there? What would happen? Who would die?)

_Sabo is still alive._

-

He tells Ace on that cliffside where they became brothers, where all of them go when emotion go too high, when the dark part of all of them, the boys of the mountain, becomes too much for them.

Ace is looking out when Luffy finds him, settling down by his side.

The Ocean is so distant in front of him, though if he reaches out he could feel the salty sea spray.

Grief drags at him and trails down his cheeks as confusion riles in his chest. Because now, _now_ , so close to the Ocean and connected to it all, with the knowledge that there’s something to look for, he finds Sabo as a whisper on the wind.

He’s out there.

He’s _alive._

 _(Can the ugly thing in Luffy’s chest **go away?**_ )

“Sabo would have wanted us to chase our dreams – we have to- “

“Sabo’s alive.”

Ace’s Voice doesn’t go silent. Instead, it _rages._

_“Luffy. Shut up.”_

“He is though!”

“NO, HE ISN’T! HOW WOULD YOU KNOW ANYWAY?” There are tears in Ace’s eyes. Tears.

(It hurts.)

“BECAUSE I DO!”

“THAT’S NOT ENOUGH LUFFY! SABO IS DEAD AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! HE’S DEAD! HE LEFT AND HE’S DEAD!”

“NO, HE’S ALIVE! THE OCEAN TOLD ME!”

Something in Ace’s face breaks at that. Luffy feels it fracture and shake and twist until all that’s left isn’t grief fueled anger but something hollow.

“Luffy. The Ocean doesn’t fucking _speak_!” It’s like denial the way he says it. “It’s just some imaginary friend, or some shit. And it certainly doesn’t know if Sabo’s alive! Which he isn’t! Dogra saw him getting shot down by a fucking celestial dragon! There’s no coming back from that!”

 _But there is!_ Luffy wants to scream because he _knows_ stories of miracles on the sea, _know_ stories of survival against all odds, _knows_ how it is too be born of water and live in air, knows that _Sabo isn’t dead_.

But Ace doesn’t believe him.

Ace shoves him to the ground and points at him till he _listens._ And Luffy does because this is his big brother, his only big brother left according to him.

He can’t lose him.

(Sabo is alive but Sabo left. Luffy doesn’t think he can have another person leave.

 _Everyone always leaves_ )

And Ace doesn’t want to lose him either.

“Sabo’s _dead._ But we aren’t, okay? We’ve got to get stronger and stronger and stronger – so we can live a life without regrets, just like Sabo wanted!”

“But Sabo’s- “Luffy shuts himself up and tries to stop the tears that fall. He won’t cry, he _won’t cry –_

Tears drip down his cheeks but for once Ace doesn’t notice.

“We will be free Luffy. _Free!_ Nothing’s going to stop us!”

And all Luffy can do is nod because Sabo’s voice travels on the wind and maybe he’s free too, wherever he is.

-

Luffy hasn’t dropped it, no matter how much Ace asks.

“Sabo’s alive” he says, when Ace is fighting him.

( _Hey Sabo!_ They both say, turning to a brother who isn’t there.)

“I wonder what Sabo is up to,” he asks at night, when Ace is curled far away from him in their meager tree house.

(Ace won’t admit he’s wondering as well, even as he throws a pillow at Luffy.)

“I miss him,” Luffy will say, and Ace agrees and Ace leaves Luffy behind.

(Because because because – Ace has never lost a brother before, never really lost anyone. And he doesn’t want to believe in the impossible and he doesn’t want to be struck down again by reality. He doesn’t want to _do this._ )

Ace’s Voice grows angrier and angrier and angrier. With every question Ace flinches and with every mention of Sabo’s name he lashes out. Harsher and harsher and harsher until-

(Luffy speaks Sabo’s name and thinks he might be a. bit stronger with every time he says it)

“Hey Ace?”

(Luffy is selfish like the Ocean, but it is his friends his _family his treasure_ that gives him strength. He is seven, but he knows this much.)

“I think I feel Sabo’s voice again.” 

(His will grows stronger. His fruit grows weaker. He’s still rubber.)

“I think he’s happy.”

Ace looks at him from across the campfire and snorts. That night, he doesn’t come back to the treehouse. That night Luffy sleeps alone and dreams of fire. The fruit chokes him in his sleep but that’s okay. Ace will come back.

(That night, Ace builds a raft, or so the Ocean tells him.)

-

Ace doesn’t talk to Luffy much now, but he’s less angry. He doesn’t throw things at Luffy in spars or yells when he talks about Sabo, only goes quiet in contemplation.

 _Rest, Dear Child,_ The Wind speaks, their Voice swaying in Luffy’s ear, _he’s coming to a decision._

(It’s nice to hear their voice again.)

Ace kicks him awake that night, a question in his eyes. “Luffy.”

“Mmph?”

“Explain to me Sabo’s Voice. What the Ocean tells you.”

Luffy looks up to him with wide eyes and starts speaking.

-

Ace asks twice more, never getting more information than _out there_ , and _safe,_ and _North_ , and Luffy can tell Ace hates it.

Luffy hates it too.

But he can’t hear the Ocean much nowadays, like Sabo shocked something out of orbit in him.

(Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been in the Ocean in weeks. Hasn’t used his Conqueror’s to control himself, all to ready to accept the fruit reminiscent of his own grief for someone who isn’t dead.)

It’s all he can tell Ace, and Ace is used to getting things he doesn’t need. Ace makes do, and when the sun rises 7 weeks after they lost Sabo, Ace sets out to sea.

He’s ten years old and tiny in his stolen dinghy, homemade raft too flimsy to stand up to the Lord of the Coast. He doesn’t tell Luffy’s he’s setting sail, but the Ocean does and the Jungle does by jerking the tree house with a _crack_ of the ground.

Luffy watches him from the cliff-sides of Goa.

Ace doesn’t look back and there’s no black flag raised above his head.

Ace isn’t setting out to sea. He’s setting out to find _Sabo._

_~~(He’s leaving Luffy abandoning him Ace please come back Please!)~~ _

Luffy collapses to his knees and wonders why Ace didn’t take Luffy with him.

(The truth is, Ace is scared of his little brother. Because Luffy looks out to sea and doesn’t look back, looks for Sabo with a conviction that makes Ace shake and tremble, believes so much in Ace’s worth, that it’s like Luffy is a force of nature onto himself. Ace doesn’t want to lose Luffy to the sea and to his brother, and he wants to believe that Sabo is out there.

 _It’s like laughter,_ Luffy had explained, _the Ocean tells me that Sabo is on an island, and he’s happy, and he’s hurt, but he’s fighting! The wind is rough somedays, but his voice carries stronger than it ever has._

_Somedays he’s to the north and other times he’s traveling! He’s really bright though, and I’m sure he’s found his own ship! How cool would that be?_

_(I don’t think he misses us,_ Luffy had quietly admitted, and Ace hates that downcast look in his eye so much, he’s going to throttle Sabo when (if _if_ _if_ ) he finds him.)

Luffy talks like the world is alive and that the Ocean would come if he all but asked. It’s power, and it makes Ace tremble in the night when he hears Luffy talk about monsters who could crush them between their fingers.

Ace doesn’t want to see his brother fall to the waves like Sabo did.)

Ace _left._

And he doesn’t come back. Not any time soon.

(Is it the waves in his ears or is it the pounding of his heart?)

-

Luffy is alone, for what seems like the thousandth time in his life. He’s used to it at this point, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

( _Pinpricks like bolts of the sun digging deep into his chest twisting like a knife raging at the hollowness of the world around him -)_

This time, the only thing he has to cling to is a letter, left by Ace by the cups that marked the beginning of their brotherhood.

 _Luffy_ it had read in Ace’s slashing handwriting. _I’m going to look for Sabo. I’ll be back._

And that was it.

 _I’ll be back_ , Ace says, and Ace hasn’t broken a promise not yet, and Luffy a thousand miles away holds him to it.

There’s no doubt that he will. Luffy does not do things like doubt, only action and will.

His brothers promised they would be brothers no matter where they were – and they all promised they would chase their dreams.

So, wherever Sabo is, he’s living his dream.

 _Free_.

He hopes Ace is free too, out at sea.

(Luffy wants to head out to sea too, to follow his brothers and chart his own path in the world. But Luffy is _weak_ , unlike his brothers, and he would never last a day without them. He needs to get stronger and stronger and stronger – and the Ocean, dim in the outside of his mind, agrees.)

-

The first week is the worst because he keeps on thinking _both_ of his brothers are here, with him, laughing and chasing each other in the trees.

 _Ace!_ He cries to nothing but a shadow and _Sabo!_ He yells to nothing but a rock.

It hurts.

Dadan and the other give him odd looks when he comes around once that week to tell them where Ace went, but their Voices are muddled by drink so Luffy doesn’t much care.

Without his brothers, the night seems darker, like when he fell down the ravine or when the wolves chased him off cliffs and into the burning Ocean. Grey Terminal is nothing but ash and dead bodies and new trash when Luffy goes to check again, not a fit playground for a seven-year-old brat with no brothers.

He hates it.

But Luffy has never been very good at dealing with shit like that. And without his brothers there’s really only one thing he can do.

On the dawn of the seventh day, Luffy goes down to the shore and waits by the Ocean.

The horizon is dim at this time of day – the blue mixes with the not yet risen sun to make some murky purple sky and the shadows of ships at sea are nowhere to be seen. The cold water of the sea washes over Luffy’s feet, leaving pinpricks of burns, but it’s an anchor to whatever reality this is.

( _Hey, Anchor!)_

Here, feet in the Ocean, Luffy can hear the world as clearly as he could _after_ the storm, after crashing down from the sky. Here, in the water, he wants that again _desperately._

(His brothers aren’t here to fill the void.)

 _Oh Sea-Child,_ the Ocean croons as Luffy looks out over her waters. _Listen Close._

He missed her and he misses his brothers.

_Turn your loneliness into strength, Sea Child, My Child._

He doesn’t want to feel this way again. _Ever, Again._

_Then we will make it so, Sea Child. Listen to the Voice._

The Voice?

_Release your **will.**_

(For Luffy is the one person to have the Ocean bow to him. His Will will forge a new era, and it cannot be tempered here. It. Must. _Rage.)_

“Okay,” Luffy whispers to the sea like a promise, and for the third time in a year, Dawn Island is hit by the force of a king.

**_KNEEL._ **

The will is thunderous as heaven and earth seem to meld for one moment in one small child.

(Across the sea, two boys pause and look up at the sky.)

 _Oh._ Luffy halts, knowing what has been missing as he lets go of his grief.

The Ocean dampens his fruit to a small seed and the world screams again.

It feels like coming home.

-

This time, Luffy doesn’t let his will slip. This time, despite the absence of anyone, Luffy will listen to the Ocean again and only the Ocean (the world), just as if he were a child. And this time, he will understand.

With the constant threat of his will under his veins, confined to one, small body, Luffy learns.

 _This is how men become like me, Sea Child,_ the Ocean says and tells Luffy of men and women and minks and fishman and _warriors_ whose hands and limbs and souls are coated in ink.

Luffy falls a tree that day, just like Ace does.

(It’s unsteady, and never stays for long in comparison to his Conqueror’s will, buts it’s fine for the East Blue and for Paradise. It’s fine.)

(But Never enough)

 _This is how the current travels_ , _My Child_ , the Ocean says and teaches him the way the trees sway and how to shift with the wind and _aim_ , how to strike true and dodging attacks like blazing bullets and black coated fists.

Luffy escapes more often than not on his own luck.

(Luffy turns eight, and his grandpa shows up, and Ace isn’t here and Sabo isn’t here. Gramps gives Luffy a hug and a Fist of Love and leaves without a word. Luffy watches, and wonders if Gramps will ever come back.)

 _This is how the world lives_ , _Luffy, Dear Child,_ and the Ocean tells him of islands that he’s heard before and the treasures hidden on them, and the secrets of desert countries that he soon forgets. He keeps close though, the whispers of stones in ruins and

(swordsmannavigatorsnipercookdoctorarcheologistshipwrightmusicianhelmsman) people who will never leave him.

Luffy learns with the tide and the sun and the cliffs, and knows more than most.

(He talks louder now, to fill the loneliness that’s not quite there. Humming, singing, tapping clicking his hands and teeth, and _talking_ to the world – it keeps that pit inside him at bay, safely locked away for now.

It grows with everyday his brother left and hasn’t comeback.)

_Listen, Sea Child, and become a King._

-

It’s hard to sleep at night. In the day, he has his Conqueror’s wrapped around him like a blanket, swallowing him whole and keeping the world precise and clear and unmuddied

-

Luffy knows bits of haki, haki enough to destroy a Tiger Lord and run wild on the mountain with no big brother to protect him.

It’s not enough, when he gets lost in a cave underneath the mountain (drawn by the promise of snake eggs and a good meal) so Luffy decides to do what survival takes.

**_WearetheVoiceTheAllTheVoicethatencompassesalldearchildwhatdoyouneedfromus-_ **

Luffy, like the Ocean, is a creature of change. There are Voices and then there are no Voices, there is silence and then there are screeches – there is family and then there is no one. The cycle repeats. Its _push_ and _pull_ like the Ocean tides, controlled by everyone but Luffy.

And the Voice of All Things _is_ all, always clamoring to hear Luffy speak but never quite breaking through because it is so much, too much, everything, to a child.

Luffy _pulls_ and takes control, forcing his mind to _Listen_ to the Voice which he has only heard once.

(Like before he is starving and tired and _lost._ Like before, lost in this cavern of darkness where the Ocean in her truest form cannot reach him, Luffy feels cold. There is only one to reach him now.)

“How do I get out?”

**_Followusfollowthesongfollowusfollowthesong!_ **

Follow, it says, pulling at Luffy’s push, and Luffy races to the tune of crashing waves and _survives._

It’s all he can hear, this Ocean song, all he has been hearing since Ace left, but this time – this time it is _more._

_(Is it like when he was a child, and the only voice the Ocean? No – it can’t be, it must be, it needs to be -)_

_(It is Child, oh it is!)_

Luffy stumbles into the light of Fuusha village’s beaches for the first time in half a year, and follows the familiar steps to Makino’s house.

( ** _Are you happy Sea Child?_** The Voice won’t go away now. **_We Will Never Leave You again! Here in open air we do not have to rush our words, here we can speak to you like all the rest, here we are yours!_** Luffy accepts it because there is nothing else he can do.)

He doesn’t register Makino talking to him, only the water in his ears. He doesn’t note the way her hands guide him inside or how she smoothes his hair down and smiles at him ever so gently. He doesn’t notice any of it, too wrapped up in his mind.

 _“Oh Luffy,”_ she says at last, the Voice receding just enough to let him hear her, and Luffy starts to cry.

_Oh Luffy._

_-_

Makino didn’t know Sabo was not-dead, or that Ace had left. She didn’t know any of it, only that the bandits were saying they were keeping an eye on Luffy via night time scouting trips to the tree house,

(She throws stones into the Ocean when Luffy tells her – Luffy wonders if the Ocean speaks to her sometimes the way it does to him.)

He talks incessantly to her, like he did when he was far younger, speaking enough for the entire world (for the Wind and Jungle and Sky and Ocean) so that Makino can pretend to understand how he knows things now and how he can break. Trees while not even being stronger enough.

_“See Makino? I’m getting stronger and stronger and stronger!”_

_“Sesese! I see, Luffy I see.”_

He stays there for three days, in his old room in the attic with the view of the sea outside the window, but it’s not really enough.

(Makino takes him to find seashells at the beach, and marvels how the burns on his skin are so much lesser now, and how he can find the brightest shells.

She marvels at how much power she feels is wrapped up in one child’s body.

 _An ocean in a bottle,_ some would say.)

It’s never really enough, when it comes to the Ocean.

Makino doesn’t want to let him go back to the woods, but Luffy understands -

**_-Learn Child Learn-_ **

Loneliness is a weapon for strength.

And if he’s strong, Ace will come back – and if he doesn’t, Luffy can find him.

(The Ocean guides Ace’s boat out to sea, keeps him safe from rough currents and Luffy trusts in her to keep his treasure safe but – she doesn’t understand sometimes. Rarely understands in fact. Luffy seems to be the exception. If Luffy can traverse the waters and face down Sea Kings and Emperors and all the people the Ocean whispered in his ear, he can keep Ace safe from the Ocean’s confusion at fragile, so very fragile, human bodies)

-

Makino kisses him twice on both cheeks (an old sailors’ tale _– once for the home, once for the sea, double to make it home to me –_ that Makino would whisper him to sleep) and sends him off with lunch.

It’s gone in the first hour in the trek up the mountain, but it’s fine.

It’s the thought that counts.

(Luffy doesn’t need to know how Makino cried when he left, all that burning, hollow, ruling power she couldn’t bear to see trapped in a child.)

-

Luffy gets stronger.

(Not strong enough.)

He doesn’t cry much, anymore.

(There’s no use crying when big brothers aren’t there to _help you._ And what good is it anyway, if Luffy can’t become stronger than it?)

His Will is ever present.

(Subduing his devil fruit while staying _stretchy_ is subconscious now. Extending his will is harder, but mastery over every part of his body, his Will is something Luffy has been quick to learn. The Devil Fruit is _his_ and it will _listen.)_

The Voice screams in his sleep.

(At night he pretends Ace and Sabo are still with him on the island, that their rage, inward and outward like complementary pieces, is still alive beside him. That they are laughing, happily wherever they are.

At night, the Ocean gives him glimpses of Ace running through strange woods and Sabo next to some girl on some strange, otherworldly ship.

(Like an apology, for not showing him it sooner. Like an apology, for making sure he won’t go out to sea now (where the Ocean would take him and never let him go.)))

And Ace…

Ace comes back.

-

The sun is setting in brilliant colors when Ace comes home. It’s the only reason Luffy spots him – he was going out to watch the sunset ( _See the colors Sea Child!_ The Sky had said), sitting upon that lonely cliff when a ship appears.

There is no flag and it is hardly more than a dinghy. In the distance, Luffy can hardly make out whose on it but –

_Soft rage, warm sunlight, his brother’s voice and sake –_

It’s _Ace._

Luffy runs to the beach just in time to see Ace pull up his dinghy.

(Luffy’s nine now and Ace is twelve. He’s taller, so is Luffy, and with new scars littering his arms and legs and back. Fights he didn’t lose and fights he did. His hair’s longer, clothes ripped, but he’s _Ace_ in the way his eyes droop and his freckles stand out, and he’s _smiling.)_

 _“ACE!”_ Luffy shouts and barrels into his brother. Ace doesn’t bother saying anything back only lets tears drip down his face as he clutches Luffy tight to his chest.

“ _I’m back”_ He stammers, throat choked with emotion, _“I’m back, I didn’t find him, He’s dead Luffy dead, I’m sorry I couldn’t find him I’m back. I’m sorry I left you, I’m so sorry, Luffy, Lu-LUffy, I’m sorry-”_ His face is buried in Luffy’s shoulder, Luffy’s tee growing wet with snot and saltwater.

(Sabo’s Voice rings across the Ocean, carried by the wind like all the other stories the Ocean told him, and Luffy doesn’t care what Ace failed to do.)

“ _Ace!”_ Luffy says again, loud and unrepentant. “You’re back! You’re back you’re back you’re back!”

_His brother is home._

Luffy’s not alone anymore, not lost to the Ocean’s pull, because Ace is _right here._

Luffy cries too, and wraps his arms around his brother three times the amount anyone else could do.

The sun sets and their tears dry, but they don’t let go.

-

“Luffy,” Ace says on the cliffside, the one they shared not the one Luffy loves. “We need to get stronger.”

_I know._

**_You know. You have been. Continue._** (The Voice is ever present these days. Luffy thinks Ace might have noticed, but he’s grateful that he doesn’t comment on the _power_ of Luffy’s will that surrounds him daily.)

“Stronger and stronger and stronger. So, we can set sail like Sabo did, when we’re seventeen – that’s when he wanted to leave, so he would never be a true noble. We will set sail and be _free- “_ His voice cracks when he says that, but Luffy doesn’t comment on it. “ _Free._ No more regrets. No more leaving each other alone.”

“Shishishi! Ace never left me alone. As long as you guys are alive I can hear your voice! Sabo’s too!”

“Then I promise you Luffy I’ll never die! I’ll always be with you!” _Ace has never broken a promise,_ and Luffy knows he won’t break this one.

(No matter what the Ocean or Fate or the world has to say about it)

“And we’ll both be free! Freer than anyone else!” Ace’s face softens at Luffy’s words, a smile forming on his lips.

 _I’m sorry I left you alone,_ he seems to be saying at every moment since he got back, always pressing up against Luffy’s side, or bearing with Luffy’s hugs or giving him piggy backs through the forest. _It won’t happen again._

Luffy was alone.

But Ace is back. And love has always hurt for him, Luffy has always hurt for those he loves, so it’s okay.

_Ace is back._

“Right!” Ace says, soft smile turning into a D like grin. “Because we’re going to be pirates!”

“AND I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”

Luffy shouts this to the heavens to the Ocean and to his brother, because being King means being free, and being King means being strong enough to protect those you love – being King means no one ever leaving you behind.

Ace ruffles his hair, pushing his straw hat back on his head, and stares out to sea with him.

_Together._

(Luffy isn’t _alone_ anymore.)

-

It’s like Ace never left, the way they fall into familiar patterns in the next five years. They renew their vow of brotherhood once every year, pouring sake into the sea for Sabo ( _He seems happy,_ Luffy tells Ace, grief forgotten when they talk about their lost brother, and Ace smiles back) and catch Lords for dinner like its nothing.

(Luffy attempts to teach Ace how to _listen_ and _defend_ and _fight_ like the Ocean taught him, but it doesn’t quite go as planned. Still, Ace is stronger now, both growing stronger, and Luffy is so, so _happy.)_

Ace asks about the Ocean now, and the Sky, inquisitive like he wasn’t before. He does more than humor Luffy’s rambles about Sky Islands but actually believes them, and seems to put his all into making Luffy happy and safe and free.

His little brother _, whom he left,_ beams every time Ace is a little kinder to him, so he must be doing something right.

Luffy is asleep when Ace thanks the Ocean for his brother, but Luffy knows it happens anyway.

The Wind likes to tell him things like that.

(They are _brothers_ now, Luffy and Ace, more than they have ever been before, and the loneliness doesn’t catch up to Luffy as often. His Will, powerful and strong, quells his fruit and Ace can splash water on him without fear of burning. Ace is proud of his little brother, loves the way the nobles in High Town flinch at his presence, at his will, and thinks that Luffy would not be Luffy if his will was not greater than the Ocean itself.

It’s a happy life, on Goa, in between bandit fights and dine n dashes and brutal take downs and hunting.

It’s a life ready for _freedom._

_-_

Ace leaves at 17 years old like he promised, and Luffy is alone again.

This time, it doesn’t feel like hidden betrayal, but a readiness to grow stronger. Luffy listens to the Voice again, and smashes rocks with a Gatling gun.

He’ll grow _stronger._

\--

 _Ocean?_ He’s never called out to her by name before, and it doesn’t settle quite right on his tongue. (Like mother doesn’t, like mom doesn’t, like Voice doesn’t, but what can you call something bigger than yourself beyond the longing of the sea?) _Is the sea happy?_

_I am the sea child._

_You know what I mean_

_Yes Child, My Child, Sea Child, you will be free._

Luffy looks to the stars from the old treehouse lookout, and thinks he just might be.

-

Luffy sets sail from the village, the same dock that Shanks did all those years ago. He has only a dinghy and a barrel of water and a crate of apples, but he’ll be fine.

Makino has tears in her eyes as she hugs him, her seashell necklace (made by the Ocean and by a child’s hands) clinking between their chests. “Be brave, Pirate King. Make us proud, alright? Listen to the Ocean.”

Luffy laughs, bright and wild, in union with the Sky and Wind and **Voice**. “Of course!” He won’t, because he makes his own path, and everyone knows it, but he’ll try.

She kisses him twice on both cheeks once more ( _once for the home once for the sea, double to make it home to me)_ and sends him off.

He’ll miss her. But she has the ocean, doesn’t she?

Dadan and the others peak out from behind the bar, and Luffy waves at them frantically. The rest of the village thinks he’s waving at some imaginary friend like he always does, but that’s for the best, he thinks.

The other villagers clamor for him to get a different boat, and Woop Slap mutters about pirates and no good kids, but Luffy doesn’t care. His feet leave the dock and hop into the dinghy, and he’s never coming back.

 _Sabo was first… Then Ace was second … Now it’s my turn!_ He thinks, hand on the comfort of a straw hat on his head.

_I’m going to be free!_

How can a man feel alone in the middle of an Ocean?

“ACE! SABO!” He shouts to the approval of the Ocean. “WATCH ME! IT’S MY TURN NOW!” The villagers don’t get it, but they have never understood anything that Luffy has ever done. Luffy casts off to the sound of cheers and frantic waving, making his way through the cove.

The Ocean is fierce, however, and her first challenge awaits.

The Lord of the Coast rises out of the sea, but Luffy’s will wraps around him. It can’t grow near.

That’s fine. Luffy doesn’t want to use his haki anyway.

“ _Gum – gum – PISTOL!”_

The Lord of the Coast dies with a single punch, its great spirit leaving and its Voice growing dim.

(It was always so angry anyway… Luffy _hated it.)_

Luffy looks out, first enemy down, and the world waiting out before him.

There’s no hesitation when he shouts.

“I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”

The Ocean _roars_ with approval. Makino is the only one who doesn’t step back from the rush of waves at the docks, both her and Luffy laughing with the world.

Luffy sails out to meet the rising sun, and never looks back.


	2. II - Ocean

**II - Ocean**

The first thing the Child ever knew was the Ocean’s lullaby, slowly swaying him with wave-crashing tones as he woke to the world.

He did not hear his mother’s voice, whispering to him in his first moments, nor felt his father’s watchful – yet loving – gaze. The rest of the world simply faded away and focused on the beating heart of the universe ( _the Ocean, the Sea, because it encompassed all and only the truly brave and **free** chased their dreams across her thunderous waves) _who was finally joyful that _someone_ could hear her voice.

the Ocean did what she did best – she _drowned_ out any other voice.

(For this child could hear the Voice of All Things – and he did not need any other voice but her own.)

-

Old sailors ( _pirates)_ talk occasionally, about kings of old and new blood and the way the storm on the horizon looks. The Ocean listens to each conversation, and lets their voices carry across the seas. There is nothing she does not know, does not hear, and she is grateful for it.

Her child, who hears her voice and hers alone, must know of the world, must know of adventures lying just out of sight on the horizon, must know that he has the world at the finger tips if only he would _chase them_.

A pity, that the child’s guardian never lets him wander out of her sight for more than a minute, or The Ocean would have swept him up in her watery arms long ago.

(She hears, but does not understand, for humans are fickle creatures and the last person who could hear her voice was far older than this child when he first heard her swaying call.

There are legends of lost children who wander the shores, who wander into the sea and never return, letting water fill their lungs and adventure dance at their figure tips, joining the ocean forever in her embrace - and she wishes her Child was so very lost.)

(But he isn’t)

(Not now, at least)

She supposes she must be content in the fact that the child’s eyes are forever drawn to hers without question, with a longing that surpasses any soul before.

The Ocean wonders, for the first time in her long existence, if this was what _love_ feels like.

(All encompassing, devoted, and burning with a quiet passion and knowledge that the world would burn with cold ocean fire before she would allow this child to be hurt without purpose.)

-

Because the Ocean loves this Child she, once again for the first time (What is this child’s power, that he can shape a primordial force that has formed the world he walks upon?), decides to learn to understand.

What she hears, understands, is something that she despises.

While she hears all voices, her child ( _Luffy, the woman of green calls him, Monkey D. Luffy, just like the most powerful men, the Child has the Will of D)_ hears no voice but her own and the worlds, the heartbeats of the islands from around the globe and legends whispered by old men but not one word of the human woman who raises him.

Apparently, his caretakers think he is deaf, as she has had this child in her sway for three years and he has yet to respond to a single word or noise anyone else has said to him.

This would be fine – a great many powerful men and women have sailed the seas lacking one sense or another – but this Child must not know only of the Ocean and Far off places, must recognize that while she encompasses all she is not all there is.

He _must_ hear of the home and hearth as well, hear that the Ocean loves him as does these people.

So, the Ocean does what the Ocean is made to do, and recedes with the Tide from Luffy’s life, leaving with one last farewell.

_Goodbye, My Child, My King._

And Luffy looks out, and smiles, saying his first word. “Bye-Bye.”

-

The Ocean is gone, but she still watches, an ever present yet distant goal. She watches as the green haired woman ( _Makino, Mother, Care-giver, Guardian)_ tears up when Luffy looks at her for the first time, and smiles, his voice, unused but ready, speaking words of wonder to her.

_“Ma-ma? Ma-ma? Ma-ki?”_

_“Oh, **Luffy!** ” _

If the Ocean had love for those who could not hear her voice, perhaps she would have taken the woman into her sway like all those children from legends.

Instead – she is merely kind to her, and the love she shows her Child. Pebbles, sea-glass, and shells of beautiful colors appear at her feet when she walks on the shore, washed up by a generous sea-foam hand. If she chooses to go in the water, it is playful and calm and just the right temperature. No venomous sea creatures or sea kings dare venture close to her and no tide pulls her from her home. The horizon, forever changing, is beautiful just for her and her Child, every time she cares to look away from the ocean's waves.

The Ocean takes care of its own – and this woman ( _Maki, her Child, her King, calls her, Precious)_ is her Child’s and thus she is hers.

(Perhaps, she would learn to have love for her one day)

-

Luffy has another caretaker, one who once traded blows with the last one who could hear her call. She doesn’t like him.

He’s called _hero_ by some, _crazy bastard_ by others, and _Gramps_ and _Shitty Old Man_ by her child who gets a hit on the head for every time he calls him that.  
  


His true name’s Garp, but the Ocean does not care for that. He punishes her child yet makes him stronger. Her Child is of the Ocean, and thus must be strong.

This man will help make him strong.

(That does not mean she must be kind to him, not after her child flees to her after every training session, playing in her shallows as the man stares at this child. He is proud, she thinks (human emotions are so strange) but still hits him on the head for every action. It is fine. Her child will learn.

_Haki_ , she attempts to whisper to a mind that’s far too young to understand, and instead Luffy runs through ravines to be saved by her graces. _Ah._

The old man watches and laughs but her child is still sad when he leaves.

_Odd_ , these human emotions.)

(The Ocean is not human.)

-

Luffy grows and never recedes. He is a tidal wave, crashing forcefully into everything he does, beautiful and dangerous all at once. He is tropic waters as well, never hiding what lies beneath his beautiful surface.

But he has no goal, no current to guide him to what he might be besides the pull of the water – the pull of an adventure and the Ocean must intervene again.

(He was meant for something far greater than an adventure, she knows this much at least. Fate does not hold much power over those that Carry His Will, but she knows her child, her _Luffy,_ will never cease to reach for the treasures beyond the horizon

So, she must intervene so he can _take_ that treasure for himself and his love and his life.)

The Red-Haired Man, whom her last Hearer loved as his own, is in her most dangerous waters, cruising as he often does and singing with each rowdy chorus. He is wandering, lost in his own adventure and –

She shall Pull. Him. _Out_.

(In the New World, Shanks sees his men try to redirect the boat once more to their chosen course, and thinks upon the past week, how the winds and currents and monstrous storms had pushed them to the East, to the East Blue. He then thinks back to his Captain, his King, and orders his men to stop.

“The Ocean shall guide us.” He says simply, adding on “Crack open the booze” as an afterthought. If he’s thinking that the sea will be merciful to them, he wants to be drunk while he does it.

He gets the strangest sense that the Ocean approves if the salty spray caressing his cheek is any answer.)

-

The Ocean watches the woman, _Makino (_ she likes Maki better), watch her Child watch her, and thinks what a wondrous color her eyes are.

It’s an odd notion, and quickly dispersed by Luffy attempting to wander out to greater depths.

For one that heeds her call, he is an _awful_ swimmer.

But while the Ocean does not fill his ears anymore, (speaking of worldly things fit for a great adventurer) that doesn’t mean she cannot help keep his head afloat. Some day he must learn how to swim but for now… she cradles her child.

In the waves of soft days on the beach, Luffy falls asleep.

-

The red-haired man has arrived, his boat pulled swiftly by ocean currents till it has docked, a year after it left, into Dawn Island’s harbor. He brings booze, laughter, and fun – but it is not until Luffy looks at him does he begin to tell stories.

The face he has when Luffy tells him he’s wrong is hilarious. The Ocean thinks he could make that face more often.

“What do you mean I didn’t fight five sea kings with only a dagger? I did!” The red-haired pirate asked incredulously.

“Benn shot half of them because you were drunk.”

“What? How do you know that! Benn, you swore to secrecy!”

“I didn’t tell him Captain.”

“Luffy who told you that?”

Luffy points to the shore. “She did.”

The Ocean’s voice snickers and Luffy mirrors it as the Captain looks between the waters lapping playfully at the shore and the kid with the grin like his captain.

It’s a funny look, the kind men get when they see a tsunami bearing down on their head with no hope of escape. The face goes pale and the eyes go wide, and nothing save for the ocean has quite managed to produce this look.

The Ocean is most definitely pleased with her child.

“Oh hell.” The sailor swears, and she nods her head in agreement.

_Oh Hell indeed – but he will bring that and more._

_-_

The Old Man who threw fists with her first has thrown her child, her sea child, into the air, far away from her strongest soul.

(The Ocean’s soul.)

The man likes to put her child through trials but only dimly does she approve of them. Her child must grow _strong_ if he is to be king, her king, king of freedom and adventure. This cannot stop him.

But this flight? It pulls her child away from her like running with the wolves never did. It dims their bond and the water in her Child’s veins till all that’s left is the thread vein of _her is alive_.

Yet.

The Ocean is not only saltwater and crashing waves. She is wind and Sky and Storm and _all._ In truth, in this world, the Ocean is **The Voice of All Things _,_ **too whom which all living creatures are connected. Different in nature, surely, but interwoven and _saltwater_ all the same.

She will protect her Child.

Her Child will _live._

Her Child ( _Luffy)_ will come home.

-

The Red-Haired man catches her child (her child who can hear all her voices now, not just the sound of waves and sea, she’s so proud, so very proud,) and nurses him back to health.

This crew that rings of freedom and adventure _loves_ her child, in that way that the Ocean doesn’t yet understand (but is trying too, in the way the way that she helps her child make shell necklaces and tell stories to others) but there is one who loves her child as well.

Who, for the past days, has been spending her days by the sea side, looking for any sight of Luffy.

_Makino,_ her child calls her, _Maki._ The people of the village call her beautiful. Her Child calls her kind.

The Ocean calls her Maki, because that is all she has been to the Ocean.

And as Maki sits in an empty bar, the Ocean speaks to her like she has rarely done before.

_My Sea-Child,_ she says, whispered in the sea breeze through the open door, _is coming home._

Maki drops the glass she was carrying, and cries, just a little.

_“When?”_ she begs to nothing, dropping to pick up the shattered glass. “When?”

_Soon,_ the Ocean says and tries to give some comfort in the form of a warm sea breeze.

That night Makino watches the horizon from some private, hidden beach, and waits. That night, the Ocean caresses her cheek and gives her a hopeful sunrise to stare at.

(That night, as Makino’s hands fist and unfist in her skirt and her hands pick apart and polish gifted shells, the Ocean marvels at how this woman cares.)

-

_He’s here_ , the Ocean tells Makino after a week, and she sets the bar for a rowdy pirate crew and one small child. _He’s safe._

She’s talked to her more of late, and it’s a kind of _something_ the Ocean in all her ears can’t name.

It’s nice being talked to by this woman, who does not ask her for riches or safety or power. Only questions of a sea-child, and a crew, and how the sunset looks from the Ocean.

( _Impossible_ , the Ocean knows, _for I am the horizon_.

_But,_ Makino asks, _won’t you try?_

Perhaps. One day.)

-

Luffy, in her grasp on her beloved island, can hear so much now. He can hear her and the Wind and Sky, and _oh_ , she is happy, happier than she has been yet. She can tell him so much more, make him understand what it means to be alive to have saltwater in your veins, in your heart, to be a Sea Child who does not go to the Ocean’s waters –

But her Child is afraid.

(Why is he afraid?)

He understands in the way that all do not, doesn’t he know that the dog which he runs from is just speaking with the Voice? Doesn’t he know that She just wants to be heard? Doesn’t he know that she in all her selves _loves him?_

(Luffy runs because others do not love him because he speaks to her, but that is fine because he is _hers.)_

Her child tries to explain his connection to her to the red-haired man.

If the Ocean had a heart, she thinks it might twist as humanity describes it.

_Oh Sea Child,_ she whispers when he is asleep because this truth would hurt him so much. He is hers like no one else is. No one else understands because no one else hears her voice. _You are alone._

(The Ocean is lonely too.)

-

The Ocean is all. The Ocean is life. The Ocean is everything except humanity in all its forms ( _fishman, mink, giant, long-neck long leg long arm, bones and hollow men, humans and angels-)_ for they are something separate.

She did not create them, but they were first to give her company. None made for her save for a few throughout history.

(She does not love humanity, but she has never known love before. What she feels for humanity is something like being treasure.

Though the meaning of treasure is not one every person is privy to.)

As the Ocean is All, when the she speaks as _one_ , she is the Voice of All Things – every form of her coming to join in one soul, one spirit, one force, one life, one _voice._

It hurts those who can hear it sometimes, which is why humanity was not made for her.

But – she is the Ocean, and her love is saltwater on bleeding cuts.

Some hear.

Some hurt and tremble and fear.

Yet some still love.

_(Luffy-)_

_-_

The men of the pirate crew carry a fruit over deathly calm waters. The Ocean is All except for humanity but as years pass she has found she is all except for these _devils_ , spawns of human ambition long before this era, dug in dirt and death in greed.

These fruits, these tainted fruits that break away from her and revolt against the base of this world, _the Ocean_ , are not welcome in her waters. Even their bearers she shall _drag down_ so that their fruits are no longer in her waters.

These men may love her but she has no love for _them._

The waters are calm in Fuusha’s docks so she does not have to touch this rubber devil.

She _hates_ it.

The Red-haired man better not let it anywhere near her child.

-

The Ocean is all seeing, all knowing, and ever present, especially on this world, where water hides kingdoms and beasts and homes, where water is the only thing that connects people, where islands sink and rise above its blue hues according to the _Ocean’s_ will not anyone else’s.

_Though there was a time –_

**_(The Void)_ **

_No._

This does not mean she can have lapses in attention however, especially when she is purposely trying to pull back from her child.

( _He will be King but she cannot be the reason why. He must be bold and brave and willful all on his own, if he is to go to the ends of her waters. She is All but he must fight gods in land and sky and sea – and her realm is just one of many._

_(Though the most far-reaching))_

So, when he, far from the Ocean’s reach in the comfort of Maki’s bar, swallows a Devil Fruit, she can’t stop him – only rage as she feels her child’s tears ever so distant and he’s _fading, her child, oh no, this wasn’t supposed to happen he is hers how can he be king without her, her child, her Luffy –_

He’s a _demon_ now, wretched and torn and filled with that _disgusting_ fruit, he’s no longer hers anymore, she won’t take him ever – ever ever ever –

Demons of men she can accept but demons of the fruit are the one thing she _hates-_

It’s an eternity till she sees (knows, _loves)_ him again.

-

Devil children, they call those who eat of the fruit, demons of Eden, demons of the Dust, are those whom the Ocean _hates_. They have dared to go beyond her grasp and dared to Challenge her in her domain. There is no force in the World but the Ocean (for even Sky and Wind and Jungle are Ocean in themselves as well – altogether a _Voice_ for the world) and so she must _drown_ challengers.

She reaches out when they eventually crawl to the siren song of adventure and then she drags them down.

Her child, _Luffy_ , is no different, despite the love she had for him. He ate of the fruit and so he has fallen.

This, the Ocean knows.

This, the Ocean can’t allow.

(Her Child is born with the sea flowing through his veins and she can _feel_ the demon rotting inside that fruit _aching_ to tear that piece of her _out_ of that child but she won’t let him. Her child is in pain but pain is not a real concept to the Ocean.)

(Love is still foreign and swept away by the presence of a devil.)

(All that is left is soul swallowing _hate.)_

Piece by piece the devil swallows the ocean in her child whole.

The Red-Haired Man, who _dared_ to bring that fruit into these waters so close to her child who is no longer _her_ child ( _she_ _hates hates hates hates hates hates-)_ attempt to comfort Luffy.

Her child still comes to her anyway, reaching out despite the Ocean sapping his strength, sapping the Devil’s strength, and _burning_ at him to get to the Devil inside of him as the devil reaches out and tries to _burn_ her away from her child.

Her child only burns.

A small price to pay.

(He cries, saltwater dripping down his cheeks, and the Ocean can feel the keening in his soul. He can’t hear anything as well now, not as he’s used too, Devil fruit clogging his ears and his sight and his heart. The Ocean will _drown_ it out.)

(Never has a child born of the Sea eaten a Devil Fruit. Two forces in opposition, fighting over a single body – it is no wonder Luffy _burns_ for there is nothing short of a war inside of him over every bit of Sea Spirit left in his body.)

Her Child will Come to Her Now.

(Even if his life must leave to do it)

-

Her Child has guardians which keep him safe and pain that does not scare him away but scares his guardians.

The Woman, _Maki_ , the one whom her Child loves (The one whom the Ocean is learning to care for), comes out one night.

The Moon silhouettes her body as her hands clench by her side. She’s barefoot and dressed not for working at the bar but for a day in the sun – a skirt and a billowy shirt, but no apron or bandana. It is just her and the waves and her _anger._

Makino yells at the Ocean and does not stop yelling for a long, long time, not even when her voice grows hoarse and her body shakes with sadness and rage and tiredness. Makino is human but her soul is far more than that, something the Ocean does not try to understand. Not now, at least

(Makino loves Luffy and knows Luffy loves the Ocean. She will not let him be hurt for the stupidity of a primordial force. Her rage might do nothing but it will be something.

Or, perhaps, it will be the spark of a change.)

The Ocean wonders, not for the first time, if this is love.

(She might have loved Luffy (she did she did she did) but she does not, not anymore.

Makino is not born of the Ocean nor has a devil in her chest.

Perhaps she is love.)

-

The Red-Haired man stays with her child and then leaves. In his absence, a bandit comes and steals her child away.

(He bleeds out, red to her blue, and she does not care. He is not her child, not anymore.)

~~(yes he is yes he is why does she deny it she keeps on calling him her child why does she deny it why why why why why)~~

Smoke erupts and suddenly the (her) child is out in the coast, sea king rising and tearing at the bandit. The red headed man is out there, swimming to her – no, _the –_ child as he splashes and burns in her waters. 

_This is her chance! She will drown drown drown drown that wretched fruit free her child who she cannot love with that fruit oh she will drown drown drown!_

But then.

But then.

_But Then—_

Her child is scared. The world grows silent ( _The Ocean grows quiet)_.

For the first time in history, the Ocean hears the command of a Conqueror as it should be.

**_KNEEL._ **

(Loud and unrepentant and strong and the Voice of a King)

And the Ocean _bows_ , her waters going still as the Lord of the Coast falls limp. The Wind stops (part of her) the Sky holds his breath (part of her) and every human being on the isle of Dawn stumbles in their path. 

(Blood paints the water red as Luffy’s will reverberates across valleys and kingdoms and seas.)

In her child’s call, her child’s raging, conqueror’s call, echoes a plea to the Ocean. Luffy does not know this inner part of him, but the Ocean does, just like she is sinking into his bones and screaming out _step away from my Child_ to the demon that lurks in his chest. The plea is not one the Ocean is familiar with –

( _Please let me live! I don’t want to die! -)_

-but something far greater.

_Come back._

It’s so simple. But this child burns and dies and drowns under her hand and _still_ he wants her back, still he calls her to his will, still, his will _crushes_ her own.

He is a child, crying and weak and burned.

Yet – he is so strong so bright and he _loves_ her.

How did she ever hate him?

She is bent to his will.

_Child._

_Child I am sorry._

He doesn’t forgive her, because to him there is nothing to forgive, and isn’t that a marvel?

-

She can’t stop herself from burning him when he enters her waters. Or from trying to drag the fruit out of him. It’s her nature and it sounds like an excuse but it’s not it can’t be it can’t possibly be.

She tells him stories and loud as the hurricane to get through the devil in his ear as an apology, even while his feet turn pink from wading in the water.

But – the Red-haired man, who has his uses, teaches her child to use his _will_ and _power_ so that he can hear her and sometimes her Voice of All Things.

He is alright, for one who let her child eat that blasted devil fruit.

He makes her child so much happier because with the lessons he gives Luffy, Luffy is able to _understand_ and listen and hear the world by wrapping his haki around him just so.

He smiles at everything, cheering at every story every living thing as to tell him and she so, so _so_ happy.

Her child hurts but survives and lives.

And most of all, the Red Headed man speaks about her last hearer, the man who was his captain, the man who was king.

_The Freest in the world._

_The Strongest in the world._

She can _see_ the dream taking place.

-

There is a man and there is a child, and between that man and child passes a straw hat and a dream.

Monkey D. Luffy will be King of the Pirates, and the Ocean _roars_ with approval.

(Who else could be king but the man the Ocean bowed to?)

-

The Old Man takes her child up to the mountains, but she does not worry. Her other selves (Jungle and Sky and Wind) will take care of him.

And there is a child who needs him more than most.

Luffy (her Sea-Child) will grow strong in the mountains.

( _He’s lonely_ , The Wind tells her when her bond grows distant with him as goes deeper into the Mountain. _He just got you back._

_I know,_ the Ocean says. _**I know,** _the Voice of All Things says.)

With her sea-child up in the mountains, there is only one the Ocean cares about.

The one who _saved_ her child, raged for her child, treats the Ocean’s child as her own.

_Maki,_ carved on a necklace made of sea glass, _Maki,_ the one the Ocean learns from.

She’s still there, walking by the sea shore.

-

Makino starts her day and ends her day by going down to the shore, no matter how late or early, the Ocean notices.

She is perhaps the closest to her Sea Child in understanding the Ocean’s truth, and her voice is so _loud_ sometimes with all the fury of hands that are held back, that the Ocean cannot possibly understand her.

Sometimes, as Makino walks barefoot along the shore, she thinks she does not want to understand her, for fear of what might happen to the Ocean if she does.

(What will the Ocean be if she can understand more than those who have saltwater in their veins? What will the Ocean be if she learns to be human?)

Maki, Makino, Maki – the names roll around in the Ocean’s heart like the sea kings that rage on the Ocean floor. Resounding and unavoidable but unnoticeable save for the Ocean itself.

Does Makino notice?

The Ocean doesn’t know.

Her Child Loves this woman like he loves the Ocean.

The Ocean wants to know _why._

(But does that mean she has to understand? Does it? Does it?)

The Ocean listens.

-

Makino, from the time Luffy has looked out to sea and rarely looked back, has talked to the Ocean, especially when the Ocean _burned_ Luffy and _ignored_ him and left him _alone._

Maki’s like the Ocean in that way, fiercely protective over Luffy, but she’s different in her gentleness. The Ocean has never been gently, not entirely, only ever in small moments, but…

Makino trails her fingers along the Ocean’s waves, gentle like the tide, and then in small moments let’s her bottled rage pour forth.

The opposite to the Ocean.

It’s fun, in a way.

(When Makino rages she has no tsunami or hurricane or tempest to rain down on those who have her ire. All she has is her fists and her voice and the gun stored below the bar counter.

When she yelled at the Ocean, she kicked her waves and threw rocks and screamed until his voice gave out.

The Ocean wonders what she would do if she was like the Ocean.)

She is fascinated by this human woman who loves her Child as much as she.

Oh.

She noted that already, hasn’t she?

Ah well.

What else is there to discover about this woman?

-

Makino talks to the Ocean in her morning and late evening walks – talks to her when the sun rises and the moon begins to set, for she is always busy dealing with customers, filling her pockets with shiny gold to take care of something she didn’t even want.

She tells the Ocean this in one late morning walk, and it is one of many secrets.

( _My father was a pirate,_ she says _, my mother owner this bar,_ she says _, I don’t want to be here,_ she says, _but I don’t want to leave,_ she says _._

_What do you know, dear Ocean?_ She asks, and the Ocean cannot possibly know _.)_

It’s somewhat like she is making up for the conversation Luffy used to give the Ocean.

(Like she knows the Ocean’s secrets already, like she knows the Ocean is more human than she wants to admit.)

Makino talks about secrets, but sometimes she sings, words stringing together unlike every tale the Ocean has heard, carried on winds of adventure.

_“Oh, pull my lover to me, My darling the sweet sweet sea, Bring her a cherry, Bring her a song, But never o never, take her from me”_ Maki sings as she walks upon the shore. “Do you like it?” She asks, like the Ocean will talk back (and oh, she has before, hasn’t she?) “It’s just something I made up, _Sesesese!_ It needs a bit more work before I could sing it in front of a crowd, though.”

Selfishly (as she has always been,) the Ocean doesn’t want her to sing for anyone else.

(But what is selfishness if not the plea for everyone to be free?)

-

Two months go by, and Makino makes small talk with the Ocean.

“Some sailors were in port today, though I’m sure you know this already and they were saying some things to the mayor that anyone else would have boxed their ears for.”

“I went to the market today, the traveling one, and I found this pendant, see? Shaped like a wave.”

“The sunrise is my favorite part of day – when there’s no customers in the bar and everything’s quiet. It’s like the beginning of something new, some grand story, and it’s so new every day. You truly do make wonderful sunrises.”

“I wonder how Luffy’s doing? I’m sure you’re worried about him… Garp told me he brought him up to the mountain but, I always worry. He’s alone, you see.”

(And her words turn cold with a glare because Makino does not forgive easily, and it hurts the Ocean, enrages her, that this woman is mad at _her_.

The same time, it makes her wonder, because rarely is someone mad at the Ocean for someone else.

How odd this woman, how lovely.)

-

Makino is beautiful when the sun shines on her, like the sun tree at the Ocean’s depth, dazzling with untold light.

She’s never found a human _pretty_ before.

Odd.

-

In the midst of this, her Child climbs down from the mountain side and is _hurt,_ by some wretch that the Ocean could not begin to care about. She is connected to her child in the first time in months, and all he is, is _hurt?_

No.

This will not _stand._

Her fury echoes across the place her child calls Grey terminal, _dragging,_ men around like play toys in her wind. The waves tower and crash onto the shore and she does not know if any man dies.

The man she wishes death does not die.

Her child does not rage with her no matter how hard she _begs –_

_(RISE SEA CHILD AND FIGHT FIGHTFIGHTFIGHTSAVEYOURSELFMYBELOVEDCHILDIWILL TAKE THIS MONSTERS AND DROWN THEM IN MY WATERS)_

But instead waits for the other children.

He wants to be strong.

She only has herself to blame for thinking that strength and love come hand in hand with pain.

(Makino looks out at a stormy sea and worry catches deep in her heart.)

The other children who look to sea but aren’t hers, not yet, crash in and save them. They are like the Ocean, learning to be gentle. And so, so very lonely.

So is her child.

But with him, with them, they aren’t so lonely anymore

Her Child finds brothers and finds happiness, and explains to them his truths and her truths while they do not understand but _love_ him anyway in that human way of theirs.

She is proud of her Sea Child.

The Ocean recedes again, and lets her child grow.

(and with that growth is able to reach him, however slightly on that far away mountain top.

-

Maki does not know of Luffy but is so _happy_ when she ventures up to the mountain top and finds he has _brothers_.

She talks to the Ocean about it at night, when she is the only one at shore.

“He’s so happy now, Sea, so very happy! He has _brothers_ , he won’t be alone again, ever again.” Makino sits down, letting her legs and skirt become wet in the gently washing waves. “I miss him, you know? But I’m happy for him.”

_I was lonely too, you know,_ Maki’s voice seems to say, and suddenly the Ocean realizes _her_ child, _their_ child is so far away from them, and all they really have is each other.

(But, it doesn’t seem like a replacement.)

Makino has heard her before.

So why can’t she hear her _now?_

Gentle fingers trace figures in moonlighted sand. Hearts and sea kings that barely look real, but an act of longing. The Ocean washes them away with one wave and Maki sighs.

_Why are you sad, Maki?_ The Ocean tries.

Makino starts and looks at the Ocean with wide eyes, the voice something she had only heard whispered before (often told to her by a child’s mouth.)

“Oh,” She says simply. “Hello.” A smile forms on her face. “I’m glad you’re talking to me now – can you keep doing it? I’m sad because I’m lonely.”

And the Ocean tells her a secret.

_I as well, dear Maki._

_I as well._

-

Makino is not like Luffy. She cannot hear her voice no matter where she is. She must be in the water in some manner, be it her hands or feet or entire body.

They make do, and if the Ocean lets her waves rise a little higher every day, as if reaching towards her, she is the only one who knows the truth.

This conversation is a discovery for Makino can _hear_ her, not like her Sea Child but like something else entirely.

It’s wonderful, because Maki knows the way of the world and will _argue_. Her love is not that of a child’s, and oh, how Makino seems to _love_ her.

She talks to her in the bar, even though she can’t hear the Ocean’s replies, and eats at the shore. She treats the Ocean not as the _Ocean_ but as something human.

Something Luffy has only recently cowed her too be like.

To understand.

To love.

Huh. How odd.

(Why can she talk to this woman? Why can this woman hear her? Why why why why?)

-

“Ocean, do you have a favorite color? Can you see color?”

_More than you._

“Oh… hm. My favorite color is blue. Like the waters you see at this beach, you know? Blue but like green, but changing in the setting sun. Huh. Guess I don’t have a favorite color anyway? Maybe just… Ocean blue?”

_If that’s your favorite color, then I think mine would be the color of your hair. Or perhaps red like your face, Shishishsi!_

“Oh, hush you.”

-

“Do you think Luffy’s doing fine?”

_Of course. He is my Sea-child._

“I suppose. He also has his brothers.”

_Them too._

“Why is Luffy yours anyway? Are you the reason he couldn’t hear me?”

_You know the reason to that._

“Hmm.”

-

_Hello Maki,_

“Hello Sea. Is that your name? Or do you go by Ocean?”

_I have many names._

“So, I can choose anyone?”

_Sesese!_

“Then how about Love?”

_…._

_“_ I’ll take that as a yes then, Love.”

-

“Don’t leave Luffy alone anymore.”

_Of course._

“Promise?”

_Promise._

_-_

Luffy’s brother is not dead but his grief blocks him to her. Her waters _rage_ and she cannot stop trying to reach him.

_LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!_ She wants to scream, but he can’t hear her, no matter how she tells him his brother is _alive_ , sailing on distant waters.

(She can’t tell him that his brother forgot. Only that he is alive. She will not try to hurt her Sea Child, like she promised Maki.)

(She left him in the fire, because it is through fire she trains her child, but that broke her promise. She will not do it again.

Her child is stronger now, so very strong.)

_Your brother is happy,_ she manages to get through, as Luffy hears his brother’s voice, _so very happy._

(And Sabo is, learning to fight for freedom.)

Luffy relays this to his other brother, and sets out to sea.

(The Ocean doesn’t tell her)

-

Makino loves the boys of the mountain and believes they are alive.

The Ocean does not tell her otherwise, does not tell her anything, because she is learning that Makino is already strong and she does not want to hurt her any more.

For once, the Ocean is unsure if this is the right course.

-

Her child learns strength.

She is proud

(He listens to the Voice.)

-

Luffy gets stronger, Makino talks to the Ocean, and the Ocean guides Ace’s ship through whirlpools and rough rocks and keeps him safe. He is small and she is mighty but he is loved.

If not by her than by Maki and her Sea-child.

It is enough to keep him alive.

It is enough to keep him strong.

_Loneliness is a weapon for strength, after all._

(Makino never agrees. The Ocean learns. Funny, how two have that power over her now a days.)

-

Luffy comes down from the mountain, and for the second time in Makino’s life time, she releases her fury on the Ocean.

“HOW DARE YOU!” She cries, chucking stones into the Ocean, as if to garner her attention. It’s the only time she yells, at the Ocean who can never possibly be hurt, and the only time she throws things. “HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME! YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE HIM ALONE AND HE COMES HOME CRYING BECAUSE HIS BROTHERS ARE GONE! ACE! SABO! DO YOU EVEN CARE?”

_I don’t-_

“WHY! WHY! WHY WOULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!”

_I-_

She collapses into the waves, her fists used instead of rocks, and cries. “I love him like he is my own. He is your Sea Child, but I know the legends, I know he’s different. So, _act_ like it!”

_Of course._

“Keep them safe?” She pleads.

_Yes, Maki. I will._

Strange, for the Ocean to keep promises. Stranger still for the Ocean to make them.

Makino does not care, and cries into the hold of the Ocean’s waves.

-

Ace comes back. Her child is happier. Her child is stronger. Makino is happier.

Her Child has a _dream._ And he will never, ever be alone (not again, not ever.)

This the Ocean has promised and kept true with her _Voice of All Things._

She is still proud.

-

Not a day goes by now that Makino does not talk to her, and the Ocean realizes she has been keeping time with Human lives in a world where the sun never sets on her waters.

_Oh_ , she thinks, and talks to Makino in the mornings, _Oh._

_-_

Maki has a beautiful laugh, one that rings like a golden bell.

_Sesesese!_ She says, and tells the Ocean that her laugh sounds like Luffy’s – _Shishishi!_

No one has known her laugh before.

-

Makino has no preference for the shape of shells nor the design, but likes to collect them all. The Ocean places only the most beautiful ones in her path just in case, and finds that Makino has a soft spot for sea glass.

_“_ The kind my mother used to collect.” She mentions once.

The next morning Makino finds a pile of polished glass from around the globe on her secret beach.

Makino has a beautiful smile.

-

Makino sings more shanties to the waves, some new some not. Once, she invites the Ocean to sing along as she kicks up water with her bare feet and hiked up skirt.

_Once I knew of a lady bright, thoughts in my mind day and night, and how pretty she looked in the morning light, and oh how my heart took flight!_

The Ocean sings with her, word for word, and Makino tosses back her head seemingly laughing to an empty beach but her face is pure joy and _Oh_ the Ocean thinks as Makino looks to her,

“Let’s sing it again, Love.”

This is what Love feels like.

-

She has never had a Love before, no matter what the legends say, but she falls into it as easy as the sway of her waves in tropical shores.

It’s not a friendship anymore, but a courtship, one that the Ocean falls into with joy.

She tells Makino of islands in the sky, a place of dreams, stories of adventure and treasure in her depths.

_Would you like a treasure?_ She asks so carefully after one of these stories, but Maki only smiles.

“You’re treasure, enough, love.”

_Oh._

She gives her messages in a bottle anyway, from far off places. Adventures that her love will love.

She thinks Makino likes them, if the way she keeps the love letters from strangers in bottles on her window sill.

(Makino’s and her Sea-Child’s life are short compared to hers, but – she has always loved those who loved to challenge her no matter how fleeting. She loves them, and she will damn the consequences.

She is the Ocean.

What looms more than her?)

-

Makino walks further in the water now, further and further. The waves do not crash against her said but instead gently lap on her waist. Her fingers trail in saltwater circles, sand soft beneath her feet, like it has always been.

How long has it been, since they first met? Since her Child, her Sea Child, who is so strong now, was born and given to this woman? Since this woman cared for child and then cared for the sea as the child cared for the sea and then for her?

Such a confusing circle, life is.

Makino reaches her hand out, in the water, and the Ocean grabs it.

Makino’s smile is like the sun.

(The Ocean wishes she could smile like that, but something tells her Makino doesn’t need her to too know she’s happy.)

-

It’s hard only having your love hear you from the waters, but do able. She can see her love wear her treasures around her neck and send longing looks to her, and talk to her as if she’s in every moment with her.

Makino cannot hear the Voice of All Things and perhaps never should, but the Ocean almost prefers this. Its more private, more loving than anything else has ever been.

(The Ocean is all and herself is the Sky and Wind and Rain and Jungle and Sand and Earth. Nowhere is without her, but with Makino it feels like she is _alone_ in her herself but…

It isn’t a lonely existence. Not at all.)

-

Her child’s brother leaves and she guides his boat once more. Makino wades in her waters that night, used to it now, the chill of the Ocean never bothering her, and asks about Ace.

_Happy_ , the Ocean replies, _Hopeful._

Makino smiles, and turns her face towards the moon.

(On a cliff, the opposite side of the isle, Luffy does the same. Her Sea Child is so strong now, he listens to all her voices and is getting stronger.

A life without regrets, he promised.

The Ocean is eternal, she has no life in truth but – perhaps, when she looks at Maki, she can do that too.)

“I’m glad,” Makino says, and so is the Ocean. “I can’t wait to see who he becomes.”

_Me too, Maki, me too._

_-_

“You like her.” Luffy says to her one day, when Trainings over for the afternoon.

_Yes._

There’s no question to who he means.

“You _love_ her.”

_Yes, Sea Child._

“I’m glad. Keep her happy. You seem happier too.”

_I am, Sea Child, I am happy._

“I’ll miss her.”

_I’ll never leave you, dear Child, and neither will she._

_“_ Good.”

_Shishihi!_

_-_

“I love you,” Makino says to her one day as she floats out in the coast, the Ocean keeping her a float and safe. There’s a small boat nearby, but Makino much prefers being held in soothing cool water as the sun shines and the clouds float above head.

(The Villagers worry for her, worry that she is the sea child that none of them were aware of, but Makino does not care. She has found she cares less for the thoughts of villagers these days, not when the one she loves tells her the story of the world.)

The Ocean stares at her and the shanty that falls from her lips after, unknown to everyone but the sea herself.

_Oh._

_I love you too, my treasure._

Makino smiles into the sea, and the sea breeze feels like a kiss against her skin.

-

Luffy leaves in the morning when the sun still rising, hugging Makino goodbye and waving to all the others.

He gives a challenge to the world, and the Ocean will rise to meet it. She rocks his boat as he sets out, and triumphantly _howls_ as he kills the Lord of the Coast with one blow.

Her child is _strong._

Her Sea Child smiles like the sun and raises his arms and _oh_ , she can’t wait for the rest of the world to hear this declaration.

“I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”

She _roars_ , her waters crashing onto the docks, the beach, the world, because with that shout her child is setting off to be greater than thought possible, to be the impossible to be _king_.

She loves him, this child who changed her so much, who made her _bow_ to the devil in his chest that he keeps in lock and key and never lets out enough to take over him, this child who was the impossible from day one.

She _loves_ him.

But she loves another as well.

The crowd disperses as her child disappears from every sight but her own over the horizon. Makino meets her on the beach that she walks every morning and night with her, and _laughs_ with tears in her eyes – proud tears, the tears of family.

“He’s going to be amazing, isn’t he?” She asks her, pride in her tone.

_Yes,_ the Ocean says, _of course._

“You’ll watch over him, right?”

_And keep you updated, my treasure – I am never leaving you._

“Of course, Love.” Makino steps forward into the Ocean, and reaches for her.

And for once, the first time in many, the Ocean shifts into something not quite sea not quite human, and kisses her.

Her, this woman who talked to her like she wasn’t learning to be human, _her,_ this woman who dares to yell at her, _her_ this woman who _loves_ her for who she is and nothing more, _her_ , this woman who cares for her sea-child like she does _her,_ this woman like sunshine and seaweed reaching upwards and coral reefs, _her, her treasure her love._

Her. Makino.

The Ocean is in love.

_I love you,_ she says in something mimicking a human breath, and Maki mimics her.

“Be free.”

And as the Ocean embraces her again, she also chases her sea child into the world, ready to guide him into a looming whirl pool.

She’s not lonely, any more.

(She never will be again, she hopes.)


	3. III - Makino

**III - Makino**

Makino meets Luffy when he is but a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Garp hands him to her, tells her that this is his grandson and to keep him safe, and nothing more. He leaves and Makino, seventeen and the owner of a new bar that she barely knows her way around, is left standing there, lost and confused.

Luffy, the name she only knows because Garp brushed Luffy’s hair aside and said it to him, laughs and it is the one thing that jerks her from her daze.

He’s a small thing, smaller than she thinks most babies are (but how could she know? She’s never raised a child before) and smiling impossibly wide. Something tells her he is not smiling at her however, but something far greater.

She follows his gaze to the shore where the Ocean splashes in waves against the shore, and holds Luffy closer to her chest.

Makino has lived by the water her entire life. She knows the stories – children doomed to fall to the Ocean’s sway, men who went out to walk upon the beach at night and never came home, women who sing to the sea and drown their voices in her eventually, and people who chase the horizon and wish to dance with ocean currents instead.

She will not let Luffy be one of those people.

Makino is not a mother, but she wasn’t a bartender till a week ago either. She’ll make do.

(She always has.)

-

She grabs a crib from Old Man Johnson and baby clothes from Miss Lydia down the street, who always likes the sea stone necklaces Makino gives her and isn’t afraid to share the clothes of grandchildren that never came.

(Sailors always die at sea if they’re lucky - Miss Lydia’s five sons were the luckiest.)

Ryla and her husband donate their children’s old toys and Luffy soon finds himself happily ensconced in the best thing Makino can think for a baby. Milly, the Midwife, shows her how to make formula, and soon Luffy is downing it like he’s never eaten before.

(Makino was right. Luffy is too small for a baby, Milly says so. Hopefully the formula will help him add on weight.)

Milly warns her that Luffy might screech all night, that it will be hard to keep him quiet sometimes but to bear with it and if she needs helps come to her.

But.

Luffy is a quiet child. He does not react to words or loud sounds or the bells Makino put at the opening to the Party Bar. He reacts when Makino waves her hands in front of his face and when colorful toys cross in front of his vision, but nothing else.

He laughs, wildly of course, because he is a Monkey D. and as loud and boisterous as they come but – he’s quiet, other than that. Instead of children screaming keeping her up at night, Makino’s up worried about what she might be doing wrong.

(She can’t fail this child, she _can’t_ )

-

Luffy’s favorite thing to do is stare out at the sea. Makino finds herself taking him to the beach to play in the sand, always finding that the most beautiful (and rounded) shells find their way to his feet. She sits there and watches the horizon as Luffy babbles nonsense.

He doesn’t respond to her words, her soft cries of _Luffy_ , and _oh honey,_ and _don’t eat that_ , but he’s entranced by the Ocean.

It’s always the Ocean.

Always.

( _Please don’t take him away-)_

-

Garp comes back more than half a year later when Luffy’s just starting to crawl. Makino’s learned, slowly, how to deal with a child as rambunctious as Luffy and a bar full of patrons from all over. It’s hard, but Luffy’s an easy child.

Give him a bottle of formula and a toy and free space to attempt to crawl, with the Ocean in view to his left, and he is happy.

Luffy has yet to respond to any noise save for the Ocean however. Makino is getting worried, and Garp catches on quickly as Luffy begins to race around the house on all fours, chewing on anything within reach.

“He can’t hear us.”

“No… not us at least.”

(They both know the stories.)

They walk by the shore, something Makino is getting used to doing every day, and watch Luffy laughing as the Ocean splashes at his feet. Makino sighs, and wades deeper into the water to let him play in the waves.

He’s a happy child, but happiest here, in gentle waves and the shining sun.

Garp watches his grandson turn his head to the wind, and hopes he will one day hear his grandfather’s voice.

-

Luffy doesn’t talk though he does eat through half of Makino’s stores. Once he started teething meat was the only thing he would eat and Makino, whose cooking skills weren’t the best before, quickly learns to keep up.

Luffy is a lesson in impossibility.

He walks soon after he crawls, never the one to wait, and his first steps are not to Makino or Garp but to the Ocean – and only the Ocean as his witness. He reaches out and toddles his way out of the bar to the sea and the shore, playing in the sand while it cushions his failures at walking. It isn’t until he finds his way back to the bar that someone catches him.

His feet are not hurt like Makino would have expected from a child walking across stone, and he’s covered in sand and smells like the sea.

Luffy doesn’t register Makino’s arms around him, but hums as he’s carried back, a sea shanty in baby babble that everyone swears they have heard before.

(Luffy babbles _oshe,_ like everyone else says love, and it’s not a word not yet but it scares her all the same.)

The Party Bar does not gain any baby gates to trap the child in but rather a watchful eye of every patron on the child that will stumble along and pull on pants or skirts of the patrons. They laugh and Luffy disappears, running out to the waves, tripping upon every stone yet escaping Makino’s watchful eye.

Makino thinks she should be worried. She isn’t. (She should be terrified. She isn’t. Just numb fear, occasionally, at night)

(Luffy stares sometimes, eyes distant and foggy, to something greater than Makino would ever be. Sometimes she never wants to know what he sees. Other times, she wants to know so she can _thank_ them.)

Luffy is what the islands call a Sea-Child, but he is also what false god’s call a storm. He’ll be safe in the Ocean’s grasps.

-

“Luffy, arms up,” Makino says after pressing a kiss to the child’s head. Luffy’s looking off over her shoulder so she taps his cheek. He giggles at the attention and copies her movements.

She slips the shirt over his head, tapping his nose to let him know she’s done, and lets him scurry off for the day.

He still can’t hear her, but he doesn’t seem to understand the sign language she shows him. Its more than a lack of hearing Makino knows.

He hears.

Just not her.

Still, he smiles at her and runs out the door, stumbling over the stairs and racing to the bar where breakfast awaits.

Like every day, cheerfully laughing at nothing and waving his hands at everything.

The morning patrons say hi to him like always as Makino walks down the stairs, and while Luffy says nothing back they think nothing of it. It’s routine, now, just as routine as Luffy looking upward when a storm is coming or shrieking with joy at every thunder strike.

Luffy loves the world, and Makino is happy for that at least.

During the day he plays in the back and wanders the streets till he finds the shore again. Everyone asks her why she lets him do such a thing, but he’s never gotten hurt before – or never acted hurt at least. He’s always covered in scrapes of some kind, but he never cries. Just continues rough housing with nets from the fishermen or the dogs from Old Lady Lin’s house.

He doesn’t seem lonely, though he’s the youngest child in the village.

(Belatedly, she thinks he is probably never alone. He hears and sees things that aren’t hers and in dim gazes has the wisdom of ages.

Her child, her _Luffy_ , has the world following his every step.

He’s not alone.)

(She hopes he is never alone.)

-

Luffy’s like the sea and the sea has unexpected changes.

Makino should have expected it when she brought Luffy to the beach that day, him, all of three years, and the Ocean looking calmer than ever.

She’s surprised, because her child who has yet to have coherent words, yet to speak to her or acknowledge her, sits and stares at the Ocean and says one word.

“Bye-bye.”

It’s like a _dam_ has burst open in Makino’s chest because he’s _awake_ , he’s not lost in the Ocean’s sway, he’s _hers_ for the first time and –

“Luffy! – Oh Luffy!” She cries, slumping to her knees as Luffy waves to the Ocean.

He turns to her, truly seeing _her_ for the first time, and laughs, reaching for her face.

Oh, how she _loves_ this child.

-

He calls her _Ma-ma_ and _Maki_ , and it’s all echoed by the Ocean in the gentlest of moments, in the way that Luffy guides her along the shore to find shells and brings her hermit crabs to put in jars. She teaches him now, letting that warmness fill her heart, how to say please and thank you to people he never knew existed, and how to make food at the counter and help out at the bar.

He’s four and rambunctious but he just wants to _explore_ and if supporting that means letting Luffy run wild in a helpful manner around the bar she never wanted, she’ll allow it.

She gives him a room in the attic with a view of the Ocean, and she doesn’t think she’s seen him happier then when he discovered her could look at the Ocean from his bed.

It is the simple things that make him happy, and Makino is so very happy to provide.

(She collects jars from all the neighbors and helps him fill them with sea shells and crabs and saltwater, then helps him dump them all out when he realizes that jars aren’t their home but the Ocean is. He’s so young to care about freedom yet it’s all he looks for in life.

In this world, it is a value Makino will treasure.

_Be free,_ she likes to think the Ocean says every time she looks through Luffy’s window, _be free.)_

-

Garp, she learns is a horrible horrible horrible man who has no business raising child, because _What the Fuck, Garp_ , she screams, surprising him with her words when her child goes missing under Garp’s watch and comes back scraped and hungry and covered in saltwater, _What the fuck!_

Who tosses a child down a ravine?

Luffy clings to her when she finds him on the shore, something calling her out that day.

(She always goes to the shore when she is worried.)

He’s tired and bruised, but safe in her arms and trembling. He falls asleep on the way home, his head lolling on her shoulder, and it is only his breath, warm and steady, that keeps her calm.

Garp and Mayor Woop Slap have always been like fathers to her, keeping care of her whenever her father (a pirate, lost to the sea, wasn’t he lucky?) wasn’t home and her mother ran the bar. But she can say she is thankful that they never thought she had to be strong beyond a few lessons with a shotgun and how to throw a punch, and for that she is thankful.

Makino is strong, that, they all know.

And she will not stand for Garp _hurting_ her child.)

Garp laughs at her rage, pats Luffy on his head, stays till when he wakes up, gives him another crushing hug (so common now that Luffy can hear him) and a punch to the head. Makino slaps him on the way out, but there’s only so much to do when Luffy is ravenously asking for meat.

She loves him but he is _hungry._

-

Makino knows her child is a sea child. He is hers, however, given to her, so she will never let him go if she can help it.

Still, this knowledge means that she knows the truth, knows that with every saltwater splash it is more than just the moon and tides.

It is more than old sailing tales and more than the secrets that old men say at bars.

Makino looks at her child and looks to the Ocean and knows that things are far, _far_ more than they seem.

-

Makino has given up keeping track of Luffy for the most part. If he does not find trouble, trouble finds him, and she rather he be happy when it does.

She knows where he usually is, though, and it’s a small comfort.

(She knows that he is always watched over, and it is no comfort at all.)

One day, he goes out to the shore and comes back with a necklace made of sea glass and her named carved in a child’s hand on the main pendant. It’s not her entire name, not even close, but she treasures it as Luffy says the Ocean helped him make it.

_Maybe_ , she thinks as sea breeze ruffles Luffy’s hair, it’s more comfort than she thought.

_(_ The truth is, like in all the stories, _The Ocean is alive -)_

She never takes the pendant off her neck.

(It’s a treasure like the sea, and the first of many gifts from something greater than man.)

-

Luffy talks about the Ocean a lot, in random phrases and words. He’ll crash into the bar and shout _“Makino! Did you know-?”_ and finish the phrase with something like islands in the sky or in the deep, sea monsters fought by giants, a land of food, and brave warriors.

(Other times, he’ll crawl into her bed at night in the way all small children do after a nightmare, and whisper about stones with bloody history and men being boiled and kings being executed. He’ll whisper about the secrets of dragons that he will forget in the morning and a tall person in black robes who hates him without knowing him. Makino shushes to him to sleep and wishes she could tell him that _of course_ , they were just nightmares but –

She can’t lie to Luffy.

He trusts her.

Instead she glares at the Ocean and is thankful that Luffy forgets most of this come daybreak.)

His favorite tale seems to be that of the _Red-Haired Man_. Makino doesn’t dare ask Garp for details about him, but knows from Luffy that he is a pirate who lives like a _true_ pirate (in his eyes) free and adventuring.

“Did you know that he fought a sea king yesterday! His first mate had to shoot it down because He was too drunk to deal with it!”

She’s not sure he is the best role model, but Luffy is happy and that is all she could ever ask for him.

(Again, she glares at the Ocean, but what role models are there in this world who do not deal in bloody battles?)

Then Dawn island is swallowed in a storm and a Red-Haired Man appears on her doorstep.

-

Luffy’s missing.

Luffy is missing and there’s a storm outside, and the Ocean will never hurt her child but others things might, but she can’t go look for _her_ child because there are _pirates_ in her bar!

“A drink, m’lady?” The Red-Haired man asks, eyes alight with laughter and body drenched to the bone, but there is no malicious intent in his tone.

Small mercies.

“Of course, sir,” Makino says, because she is twenty-four and scared but her father was a pirate and her child is loved by the Ocean, so she cannot waver. “For your crew too?”

“Of course! The best rum you have! We’ll being partying tonight boys!” The crew cheers at his words, already striking up music to cover up the storm outside, and Makino gets started on the drinks.

Lightning flashes and the door slams open.

“YOU!” Luffy shouts, safe and tracking mud in everywhere as he enters the bar. Makino tenses and cries in return.

“Luffy! Where have you been!” Everyone is staring, but these pirates are the men that Luffy talks about so proudly, so surely, they won’t hurt her child.

(Right?)

Luffy ignores her to hop on the stool next to the captain.

“Tell me a story, old man,” He says, and Makino freezes. The man next to him does the same, staring at the child (the child with the Ocean’s breath) with wide, open eyes before laughing.

(Does the Ocean laugh too? Makino _swears_ she can hear a _shishishi_ drifting in from the storm outside.)

“Ha! Who are you brat? Don’t you know it’s polite to introduce yourself first?”

“No. You’re a pirate. Why do you care about manners?”

Oh, she is going to _throttle him_.

“Dahaha! Brat! The name’s Shanks.”

“Luffy.” He says, and Makino knows her child will never be the same. “Now tell me a story.”

And Shanks does.

-

Luffy loves Shanks, Makino can tell. He trails after him every time he is in port like a lost puppy, begging for another story or too, and correcting every tale, always backed by Benn or Yasopp.

There are worst role models, Makino finds, that Luffy could have. She’s just glad they aren’t teasing Luffy into drinking.

The Red-Haired pirates love Luffy in return, and make the Party Bar their base in the East Blue. They gladly tell Luffy their stories, show off their strengths, talk and sing and teach him dirty jokes and shanties that Luffy doesn’t even understand. They swing him up on their shoulders and take him round town, let him explore their ship and are so _damn proud_ of him for everything he does (not that they will tell him that of course. They need to have _some_ dignity left. Men.)

They do, like the rest of the villagers, notice Luffy’s oddities, how he stares out to sea and talks to nothing, how he corrects their tales and talks of places no one has ever told him.

Makino talks to Shanks about it, once, in between the playful flirting he gives her, about Luffy’s life. How Luffy couldn’t hear her, how he talks to the Ocean, how once she caught him with his fists like tar when he was four and how he forgot about it right after. How his grandfather has a will and Luffy’s is ten times stronger, how Luffy has talked about Shanks even before he met him.

It’s nice, spilling her worries out to this man who was a pirate with the Pirate King (does Luffy know of him yet?), making it all seem _real._

She was seventeen when she was forced to become a guardian. She loves Luffy, but she is scared sometimes.

Shanks nods with her, and looks at the sea when she says _Monkey **D.** Luffy. _

All he says is _I know. But it’s something more than a storm this time, aye Makino?_ And honestly, how can a man prepare for the revolution?

-

Luffy seems disappointed in Shanks. In their daily oceanside walks, Makino thinks she knows why.

_Oh Luffy,_ she wants to say, and wrap him up in her arms. _No one is quite like you._

(He wanted Shanks to understand like Makino didn’t, wanted Shanks to hear the Ocean too. Wanted to know that he wasn’t alone. Makino knows this, she knows, but what can she do but wish to hear the Voice that Luffy hears at every moment.

What and odd life, she lives.)

Instead, she takes Luffy for walks to the Ocean and lets him play in deep waters and knows that nothing is ever quite like this.

(The Ocean splashes at her feet and leaves her pretty sea stones, so it’s not such a bad life, now is it?)

-

Luffy stole the knife she kept under the counter and stabbed himself in the face.

Luffy stabbed himself in the face with Shanks’s encouragement.

Luffy _stabbed himself in the face._

Just so he could prove he was strong.

(But you are so strong, Luffy, you are so strong, doesn’t he see that?)

Why are people so foolish?

Makino wipes blood away from Luffy’s bleeding face and stitches his wounds and bandages his face, all the while Shanks recovers from his mild freak out and argues with a child a quarter his age.

He’s laughing.

And crying just a little.

Makino will yell at him anyway, and she feels vindicated when the Ocean joins her and splashes at Shanks with murky dock water.

Luffy laughs anyway and Shanks carries him everywhere that day, so it all turns out all right.

(It doesn’t stop Makino from pushing him into the water though.

_Honestly_ , who encourages a child with a knife in their hands?)

-

Shanks leaves. Luffy gets sad, and spends his days watching the horizon, looking for that flag on its way back.

( _It’s Freedom,_ He explains to Makino, and she still doesn’t quite get it but loves him anyway.)

What comes back is not black sails but the gleaming white sails of the _Doghouse_ , Garp’s own Marine Ship.

He takes Luffy out for a training session, balloons in hand, and Makino worries but does nothing.

She should have done something.

_“YOU WHAT!”_ This is worse than the ravine or the nights Luffy spent in the jungle.

“Sent him on flying lessons!” The old man is picking at his nose and Makino’s rage is only thinly veiled. “He’ll be back. He just needs to angle the balloons back! He can figure it out.”

“He’s seven!”

“And a half! And my grandson!”

Makino’s honestly surprised he knows Luffy’s age

“That doesn’t make it better!”

“Eh, he’ll be fine. I’ll be back in two months. Have some donuts ready for me then!”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

“Bye!”

Garp helped raise her but she is going to _throttle_ that man. She shoots her shotgun at him on his way out. He can take it.

Bastard.

-

She doesn’t know which way Luffy flew, so going off after him would be a fool’s errand but – what else can she do?

She has to do _something_ , because Luffy’s out there dying and a thousand feet in the air, and he’s _her child!_

She paces endlessly by the shore, watching the horizon for some peak at Luffy, for some spot in the sky that is her child coming _home._

The Party Bar seems dead these days without Shanks and her child and the crew.

She never knew how much she hated the silence before.

(The Sea is so calm now, as she wades in it, as if trying to wash her worries away. It doesn’t work, but the Ocean now has a few more salty tears to add to her waters.)

On the sixth day, she sits in an empty bar with the door wide open, as if _begging_ Luffy to show up there like he always has.

He doesn’t.

But there is a voice in her ear, and suddenly Makino knows peace.

_My Sea-Child is coming home._

Luffy always described her voice like waves. Makino never knew how true it was.

_“When?”_ She begs the Ocean, for who else could it be, and hopes for good news.

_Soon,_ the Ocean assures, and brushes her cheek with a breeze, _Soon._

(That night she takes all the shells Luffy gave her and polishes them to perfection while staring out the Ocean door. Eventually, there is a horizon, and then there is hope, but for now there is worry and loneliness.

The waves from the Shore calm that, somewhat.

Does someone out there ( _The Ocean)_ care?)

-

For a week she talks to the Ocean, finding whispered conversations when she stands in the water. Not always, not very strong, but a voice all the same and it is comforting. She asks her (the _Ocean)_ meaningless questions, and when her feet glide along the shore she gets updates on _Luffy_ and _Shanks_ , he was rescued by _Shanks,_ and she is as happy as she can be.

(These walks become routine and it’s all she can cling to now.)

_He’s Here, He’s safe,_ the Ocean tells her then, on the seventh day, and her child comes home, safe in her arms at last.

When he wakes and wanders the streets he is _different_ now, in a way that scares her, but she can do nothing but offer love and support to her child who can hear more than the Ocean now.

_What,_ she asks the Ocean on some early morning what, _does he hear?_

_My voice, dear Maki, my voice._

And that is that.

-

Shanks stays and makes Luffy so, so happy, but Shanks also stays and causes Luffy to eat a devil fruit.

A _devil fruit._

Luffy writhes in pain and blacks out on the ground, tear tracks falling down his face, and Makino learns the meaning of hate.

(Outside the Ocean grows choppy and dark and _that_ is where the hate is coming from, the hate that Makino learns exists, how can the Ocean hate her own? How can the Ocean hate Luffy? _How can she hurt him? How how how how how?_

_-_

Luffy can’t go in the water any more, the one thing that gave him so much joy, and something in Makino is crushed. Because more than just drowning, Luffy is made of the sea, and now he is also made of dust.

The sea _burns_ him from the inside out, leaving him pink and raw and hurt, and Makino learns to hate the sea.

_Why do you hurt him?_

Luffy becomes so listless after that first discovery, after that conversation with Shanks with the Ocean in sight, when he learns the Ocean hates him. It’s so unlike the rambunctious child she knows, and even Shanks doesn’t have an answer as to why the Ocean suddenly hates him.

_My captain could hear the voice,_ Shanks says, referring to the Voice that only Luffy hears in fool and that Makino hears when she is out in the water, _but even he did not have a devil fruit._

_Luffy’s born of the sea,_ and that is something Makino knows without a doubt.

She tries to cheer Luffy up, gives him platters of meat and helps tell stories with Shanks, but it doesn’t’ help. Luffy is still lethargic unless he’s sprinting to get burned in the sea, and Makino _hates_ it.

But it doesn’t hurt until Luffy asks “Maki, why won’t the Ocean talk to me anymore? Why doesn’t she like me?”

(What child should ask why their parent hates them?)

“Oh Luffy – I don’t know.” She knows why the Ocean burns him (its nature and it hurts and the Ocean never changes her nature even if she changes the courses of her waves but-) “But I’m going to find out - this isn’t your fault.”

It isn’t.

(Luffy looks so hopeful when she says it, and she can’t disappoint him, she _can’t, she can’t.)_

That night when Luffy sleeps restlessly in his bed, Shanks camping out downstairs in the bar when he inevitably wakes from a nightmare, she goes out to the shore, barefoot and how she is usually dressed when she takes Luffy for walks, and _yells._

Her feet are in the Ocean and there are no burns that hurt her limbs, not like the ocean hurts Luffy, and that hurts more than anything because that is her _child_ and she wishes she could take his pain.

She doesn’t know what she yells, only rage like lava pouring from her mouth into the endless sea. The water is deadly calm around her but that does nothing more than stoke her fury, so she throws rocks and boulders and pebbles into the sea.

Her voice is hoarse.

Her hands shake.

Her body trembles.

When she collapses to her knees in cold ocean water it is not because her fury has ended but because she no longer has the strength to stand.

How long has it been?

A day? Two?

Luffy must miss her.

(She will not abandon him.)

She comes back with the Ocean trailing after her and hugs her child too her chest.

(She will not abandon him.)

-

At night the feeling curls inside her as she looks out at what once gave her comfort.

_How,_ how could something so _great_ hate someone so small? How could the Ocean hate her own?

(This is not the first time Makino has encountered the Ocean’s wrath ( _wasn’t your father lucky to die at sea?)_ but it is the first time she knows wrath directed at the Ocean’s own, someone who has not yet dared to challenge the seas.

It is the first time Makino feels the tendrils of hate creeping up her chest and she _hates_ it, because her anger is rare and never at her child, never at the Ocean, but now –

Now it is.

And she _hates_ it.)

-

Makino should have known the bandits would have come back. With Shanks there, there was safety, but now?

Now the bandits have stolen her wayward child (her treasure) before Makino even had a chance to pull her gun.

_Damn._

The Ocean does not whisper to her that black sails are on the Horizon, but Makino does not need the Ocean anymore to tell her secrets of the world.

(She wants it, desperately, but what use is someone who _hurt_ her child?)

Makino goes out on her own and finds Black Sails at the Docks and tells them that Luffy is _gone._

What power does Luffy have that people like the Ocean’s rage love him so?

(He smiles and loves and pulls people closer to him and honestly Makino doesn’t know why she questions it.)

-

**_KNEEL._ **

The world shakes.

Makino kneels (right there on the beach, watching the water in the distance turn red, hoping it’s not her child, her beloved child, oh _no-)_ and prays to nothing.

Luffy comes back, smile bright, and the Ocean has seemingly shifted.

Makino smiles back.

-

Luffy is different now, whatever force of kings that came from the water changing him in a way she can’t believe. Garp, when he comes back, takes note and Makino takes note of that.

Garp does not hurt her child again, at least not like before, and for that she is thankful.

Because Luffy is different now, but the Ocean loves him again, and how could Garp hate his grandson who has the Ocean tied to his will?

Makino doesn’t know, and in the absence of Luffy (in the jungle for the weekend), goes down to the shore to think.

Garp does not hate Luffy. Makino does not hate Luffy. The Ocean does not hate Luffy.

But… Makino hates the Ocean right now.

She doesn’t like the feeling.

(She used to love the Ocean, she thinks, trailing her hand in Ocean waters knowing that the lady of the blue knows where she is. The Ocean was there when everyone else was not, constant and unfeeling towards her and an escape from everything else. She does not want to hate her refuge.

But Luffy comes back from the mountain smiling and with burns on his legs and hands, and she finds the road to forgiveness is long.)

-

Shanks will teach Luffy how to control that force of Kings from the sea. Makino is thankful, and gives them free reign for the bar that day, giving Luffy four kisses on the cheek on her way out.

She does not like hate. But she doesn’t want Luffy to witness it either.

She goes down to the shore again and talks to nothing.

(This cove she found is far from Fuusha’s view. It’s one she found refuge in as a child, and one hidden enough by rocks and trees that no one else dares venture. She found it because. Of her father. She keeps going because of the view.

Soft white sands with pebbles and sea glass and shells, a cliff rising high to her right and a series of tidepools to her left. The shallow dip allows her to only see the sea and the ships coming in and out of the harbor, and it’s like a second home.

There’s a small reef, about 50 feet out, keeping the water at her chest, and it is her favorite place on the island.

She loves it here. She wants to continue loving it here.)

She settles in the sand and speaks.

“I don’t think you are listening. I don’t think I know how you work, exactly, but I used to love you, but now I hate you. Because you _hurt_ Luffy, you _hurt_ him, and he doesn’t forgive you because to him there is nothing to forgive, but I don’t either. And it’s going to take me a while to do. But. I want to try.” Makino takes a deep breath, feeling almost silly, the words awkward on her tongue and not what she normally says, but she feels lighter.

“So… My name is Makino. Do you like to talk? It must be lonely being the Ocean.”

-

Makino’s feet are dry by the time she returns to a bar of unconscious pirates and Shanks telling her child about the Pirate King.

There are _stars_ in Luffy’s eyes, and she wonders if the Ocean acknowledges titles like King, or only souls like them.

Either way, Luffy has a look in his eye, and something settles in Makino’s chest.

Shanks waves her over to join the conversation and she happily does, pouring juice and ale for her boys.

_What a time,_ she thinks, _to witness the beginning._

She’s always loved sunrises. Everyone else seems to know how the story ends, but rare few get to see how it begins.

Luffy laughs and smiles at the sun, and if this is not a beginning, or part of one, she does not know what is.

-

Makino’s there when Luffy first declares his dream to Shanks. It resonates like a song, a call in her chest, and she thinks the Ocean feels it too, in the laughter distant on the sea breeze and the saltwater that splashes at her feet.

“I’m not coming back Anchor.”

“I know.”

“Yeah. You know why?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think you’ll forget.”

“I WON’T!”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I WON’T! I’m going to surpass you one day! I’ll be a great pirate by then! I’ll be KING OF THE PIRATES!”

“Well then… if you’re going to be our king… do me a favor… Keep this hat safe for me. This hat means a lot to me. Promises that you’ll give it back to me, when you’ve become a great pirate, alright?”

_Shishishi!_

Makino smiles, tears in her eyes, because Luffy will be _king._

_-_

Garp takes Luffy to the mountain but tells her he is safe. Woop Slap tells her this too. Makino sees the Ocean as calm as a lagoon and trusts Garp and the Mayor despite her judgement. She’ll visit in four months, when she has an excuse to, and takes the time to miss the sound of laughter in her house.

(The attic with the ocean view is empty. No feet pitter patter above her head when she is trying to sleep, or beg her to go with him to the beach that day. Its lonely, but Makino tries to stay busy. Without pirates and without children the Party Bar has few busy hours however. She makes due.)

Makino takes to walking by the shore more often, trying to repair what she sees has a torn relationship. With every sea glass that appears at her feet, every warm day by the shore, she thinks its healing, ever so slightly.

Thinks that maybe the Ocean notices her too.

-

What do you talk to the Ocean about? Makino doesn’t know, but makes it up as she goes along.

Because the Ocean knows everything with the Ocean (which is basically the world, on this lovely planet) so what else is there to tell but things from Makino’s mind?

She tells the Ocean of sailor’s gossip, because a bar is where you find information, and things about her day, because the Ocean has never gone to a market place.

“The stalls were red today; old man Lee must have bought some new covers. It’s like coral you see, and the sun, that’s what red is.”

She dips her feet into shallow waves and talks about the past, how her father died when she was eight, well before the Pirate King’s reign, and how she found that it was better than when her mother died at seventeen, too some cold that maybe Makino could have stopped.

The Ocean is a good listener, but doesn’t really respond in that wave like voice she did before.

(Makino misses it.)

Her hate lessens and then ebbs and flows like the tide when she talks about Luffy.

“He hates being alone,” she tells the Ocean, voice cold and harsh not unlike her rage before, and she _finally_ gets a response in the form of choppy waters. She’s proud in some strange way, that she, normal and only human, could provoke the Ocean like that.

She likes it.

-

One day, the Ocean rages, and then a month later (a month of conversations and noticing how beautiful the Ocean looks under the sun) Makino ventures to the mountain top.

It’s odd having the sea smell be left behind, but odder still to find a bandit hut without the view of the sea. Mayor Woop Slap beside her snorts, but Makino finds a quick companion in Dadan.

(She’s strong, tough, like Makino wishes she could be, but Dadan looks at her and tells her _Wish I was strong like you_ , and Makino finds that maybe she is stronger than she thought. She likes this woman, despite her way of raising three boys, but if the boys were strong enough to tear down cliffs then what can you do, truly?)

Makino is so _happy_ , when she meets Ace and Sabo, two boys like her Luffy, who call Luffy little _brother_ and sound so damn pleased at the fact. Its endearing, and Makino quickly matches the clothes to fit them as well.

She finds love growing in her heart for these boys as well, and vows to visit again someday soon.

(Ace frowns lighten when he sees Luffy and Sabo’s eyes light up as well – Luffy _changes_ people, and Makino wonders how he changed her.

She’s jealous, just a bit, that these boys can live up here and be free, but perhaps it’s more of the company they have rather than the jungle life.)

-

She goes down to her shore again, and tells the Ocean this tale.

(Does the Ocean know of tree top adventures, or does something else own that life?)

It’s night as she traces figures in the sand, her feet trailing in the water, skirt wet but she doesn’t care.

“…I’m Happy for them,” She ends with, thinking about how empty the Party Bar is and how happy Luffy is up there.

(She’s lonely, in this village, the youngest of her age group, the only one unmarried, the only one owning a bar. People come to her for nights out, but she has nowhere to go. She misses having friends (all who left for the city.) She thinks it might be how Luffy felt, sometimes.)

The Ocean washes her sand drawings away, and seems to grab on to her hand.

_Why are you sad, Maki?_ That voice like waves and summer breezes whispers through her ear, unexpected, and Makino finds her mouth opening in shock.

“Oh,” She says looking out over dark waters which seem so much more alive now. “Hello.”

The Ocean splashes back, waiting for her too speak, she thinks. I’m glad you’re talking to me now – can you keep doing it? I’m sad because I’m lonely.”

That voice again, so beautiful, so strong when she’s touching the water, caressing her cheek in a breeze and the Ocean tells a truth to her.

_I as well, dear Maki._

_I as well._

-

The Ocean talks to her now. The _Ocean!_ And she, Makino’s sure she is a she, reaches for her and seems so much like Makino that she thinks her hate is gone now in lieu of understanding.

(Luffy left her when he ate that fruit. She was lonely too. She was angry. It’s not an excuse but a reason, and Makino thinks she could forgive and let go.)

Makino talks now, like Luffy, to everything but seemingly to herself. She knows the Ocean listens now, and the world seems smaller and less lonely when Makino only has to go to the shore for a conversation.

She banters with the Ocean, talks in quiet moments, reads the waves like one reads faces and responds to non-verbal nonphysical cues of something greater than herself.

The Ocean was always beautiful before.

Now, she seems so much more _vibrant._

-

“Did you know that there’s an old tale that says you have a physical heart? Is it true?”

_No – I came before hearts existed, Maki._

“Hmm, guess I can tell Old Man Johnson that he really doesn’t own the heart of the Ocean now, right?”

_Shishishi! Of Course!_

(She wonders who does hold the Ocean’s heart, sometimes.)

-

“Oh, my love dances on the waves, a hand stretched to eternity, and my love I would dance with you if only – oh, I can’t think of anything. Do you have an idea?”

_I listen to sea shanties, not sing them._

“I think you should try, one day. Surely you have before?”

_No…. but perhaps._

_-_

“What’s it like for you in a storm? Are you angry?”

_No – tis just my nature. I am the Ocean, Dear Maki, my waves rage because they must rage, just like you rage to protect the Sea Child._

“Our Sea Child.”

_Oh – yes. Ours._

-

“I think that I should change the Party Bar Menu. Old Man Charlie is getting antsy these days.”

_Do you call everyone Old Man?_

“No, sometimes I call people ‘Old Lady’”

_Shishishi!_

“But no, it’s just what everyone calls them. The elders of this small town. Perhaps I’ll be one, one day.”

_You would look beautiful with silver hair._

“Oh… thank you, love.”

-

She wonders at night if the Ocean is truly the Ocean’s name, and finds she does not care for the answer.

The Ocean is so beautiful, in every sense of the world, and Makino finds herself staring at her from her house, wishing to be with her. She’s softer, with Makino, Makino finds, and it makes her happy.

She thinks to yesterday, when she called the Ocean love, and realizes that her hate is gone replaced by something so fantastic _vibrant_ in her chest that she’s amazed she didn’t notice by now.

_Oh._

She loves her.

_Makino loves the Ocean._

_-_

_Hello Maki,_

“Hello Sea. Is that your name? Or do you go by Ocean?”

_I have many names._

“So, I can choose any name?”

_Shihishi!_

“Then how about Love?”

_…._

_“_ I’ll take that as a yes then, Love.”

_-_

Makino notes the choppiness of the Ocean and the news that a Celestial Dragon was visiting Goa, and takes no note of it.

_It’s the way of the world,_ she thinks, _to hate those who hate freedom,_ and moves on with her day.

(Two children grieve days later, and Makino is none the wiser.)

-

“I wonder how the boys are doing?”

_…._

“Oh, quiet today, aren’t we Love? That’s fine. We all need a day of quiet. Come back soon, though?

_…._

-

Luffy comes stumbling into her house in the middle of the afternoon, covered in scratches and mud and dried tear tracks, and Makino’s heart breaks and shatters all at once.

He looks at her, tiny body trembling and eyes so distant, and it reminds Makino of the time the Ocean hated him.

It is not the case now, but –

It hurts.

She guides him inside, away from the prying eyes of the street, and smooths out his messy hair and smiles at him, her own smile breaking. He looks past her as she keeps on speaking to him, and it’s hard not to let her own hands shake as she is reminded of her first three years with him.

Her first three years when he could not hear her or see her, really, when he was lost in the Ocean’s sway (a _sea child-)._

“Luffy,” She says, voice shaking, and repeats it. “Oh Luffy. Oh Luffy, oh Luffy- “

She pulls him to her chest and keeps repeating it as the Ocean slops at the shore outside. Luffy’s so small in her arms, so very, very small.

_“Oh Luffy,”_ she repeats, and eventually he does listen, and _cry._ “Oh _Luffy- “_

What has happened now?

-

Luffy tells her in stumbling words, talking of a loneliness she never thought he would feel again, and a death-not-death she didn’t think was possible. How could the bandits not have told her this? She has Dadan’s den den mushi. She has connections. She has _everything,_ even the Ocean, and she did not know that three children, her children, were suffering breaking apart at the seams?

She hugs Luffy to sleep and puts him to bed in her room, knowing he won’t want to be alone that night, before going to the shore and _raging_ with thrown rocks and vicious words at the Ocean.

The Ocean _promises_ her again, and this time Makino will hold her too it.

(In the meantime, she takes care of Luffy, makes it clear that he is not alone, takes him to the beach and talks with him and the Ocean. He marvels at her, and she smiles at him, and something broken becomes a little less so. It’s fun, walking along the beach with Luffy again, so very fun.

She wishes it could last forever, just her, the Ocean and her child.

But somethings need to be chased, and it can’t happen sitting at home.)

Luffy leaves for the mountain after three days, after Makino strong arms the Ocean into a more careful watch, and it’s like seeing him head out into bloody waters again.

She hates it but –

Luffy reverberates with a power now, something protective, something like the Ocean, and that power can’t grow on the beaches of Fuusha.

(She wishes it could.)

(Loneliness does not create strength no matter what the Ocean thinks.)

She kisses him twice on each cheek before he leaves, and hopes it’s enough to keep him safe and whole and _loved._

-

Ace comes back after two years.

(It was a long two years, where Makino visited as often as she could, and Luffy got stronger and stronger and stronger –)

(The Ocean tells her that her child is back at night when she has a bar full of customers, but she does not pretend to hide her smile or the reason why from the bar patrons.

Even as far as the shores of Fuusha, Luffy’s dream reaches Makino.

“ _I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”_

She loves him, so very much.)

Life moves on. Makino finds sea glass along the beach, the kind she has in jars along her room, the one keepsake she was proud to keep from her mother, and smiles.

The Ocean, her Love, is very sweet when she wants to be.

-

Her Love begins to give her gifts, more than sea glass, in her walks upon the beach. Stories of adventurers, of beautiful places, sly compliments fitted between each word. Makino wonders, distantly, where the Ocean learned to flirt, to court, and finds she does not care.

She treasures the whispered words told to her in the most beautiful voice imaginable, and is happy at the sea shore.

-

Makino wonders if the Ocean loves her back, sometimes, but it is hard to have doubt when the Ocean pulls her in, closer and closer and closer. She can only hear her when she is with her, but Makino does not mind. She wears trinkets from her Love across her neck and professes her own love is compliments and stories and gentle touches along the shore. She finds stones from mountain tops and gives them like a gift, watches the Ocean at her most beautiful, and sighs.

(She does not know what makes her so special that the _Ocean_ would notice her, but does not question it. She is thankful instead, for she knows if the Ocean didn’t Makino might have ended up like the Lucky sailors, chases her Love across her own waters.)

They are lonely in a different way now, but Makino finds she can bear it.

She sleeps on the shore some nights, the chill chased away by the Ocean’s selves, and she had never been happier.

-

“Love? Are you happy?”

_With you, always._

“What happens if I leave?”

_Then I will be lonely, but I will still love you, and I can bear that loneliness._

“What happens when I die?”

_Then you join me, in this wondrous sea, and we are happy together again._

“I hope so Love, I hope so. It would be lonely without you.”

Makino feels a kiss on her cheek from sea spray and smiles.

_Then I hope we never part, my love._

_-_

Ace leaves, Makino giving him two kisses on each cheek as is customary, and the Ocean keeps him safe. Luffy does not look so lonely anymore ( _the Ocean tells her he can hear the Ocean anywhere, and Makino is proud at how far he has come)_ and hugs Makino goodbye as he races into the mountain.

(She thinks he notices the way her eyes linger on the waves, how she smiles at the horizon, how her fingers trail the wet spots on her cheeks when she walks by the shore, and she hopes he is proud at how far she has come.)

-

She takes to floating her dinghy out to the middle of the coast, and sitting in the deep water. The village thinks she’s crazy, but the Lord of the Coast will not harm her under the Ocean’s watch.

(What’s more, what Makino does not care for, is the rumors of _sea child_ , echoing after every step like the phrase did with Luffy. It’s not accurate, not true, because Makino is not the sea’s child but her lover, and she is proud, so very proud to be her)

Out in the coast, it is just her held in the Ocean’s arms. It is quickly becoming her favorite place to be because she can just float out there and no one will think to look for a bar maid out at sea.

She can hold hands with the Ocean letting her sway her to sleep, eyes facing upwards to the sky as she imagines nothing but happiness.

(Occasionally she will be worried that she is _not_ worried that her lover doesn’t have a face, isn’t even human but – what is the use worrying about the unchangeable nature of people not your own?)

There, floating in the midst of the sea, away from everyone in her village, Makino realizes she hasn’t told her _Love_ , that she is, you know, her love.

That over the years her love turned hate turned love again has turned romantic and she could not imagine her life with her presence.

She has not told her that she loves _her._

She turns her head to the side, hands clasping watery ones beneath the waves, and speaks the only truth she knows.

“I love you.”

The waves keep moving but the humming voice of her love stops. To fill the silence (but she is never afraid of death only afraid of misstepping) Makino hums a shanty, an old one, whispered into her skin by the Ocean herself.

Words fall from her tongue as the Ocean holds her, a litany of praises and sweet nothings.

Then –

_Oh._

_I love you too, my treasure._

Makino smiles into the sea instead of singing, and imagines the sea breeze is a kiss on her face.

-

(She is in Love with the Ocean

Her child is a sea child.

The Ocean is in Love with her.

Makino wonders when her life became entwined with something, somethings, two people, greater than herself, and knows she would never change a thing.

-

Luffy sets sail into the rising sun, and Makino is shocked with the fear that she will never see her child again.

(A lie, of course, because she will see him on bounties and newspapers and in person, an invisible crown above his head but – this is not the end of the story. She does not know that yet.)

She is thirty-four years old and the owner of her own bar for 17 of those years. She has been the lover of the Ocean for half that time, but realizes her life has been so very, very short.

(She loves her life though, will never change it.)

Tears burst in her eyes as she holds the face of her child between her hands. Luffy, the little boy who never saw her or heard her yet _loved_ her, is so grown up now.

She hugs him tight to her chest, knowing she has only really been there for seven years of his life, but she _loved_ those seven years, and wishes him well. “Be brave, Pirate King.” Because, that is what he will be, won’t he? “Make us proud, alright? Listen to the Ocean.”

He laughs, mimicking the Ocean in that proud _shishishi!_ and promises a false thing, but means it all the same. “Of Course!”

She kisses him twice on each cheek, a prayer he’ll make it home, and sends him out to sea as he shouts his dream to the world after killing the enemy of the village.

“I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”

The Ocean showers her in sea spray as she cheers for her child, Makino as well, and _oh,_ she is so proud.

Luffy sails off into the rising sun, and Makino thinks this is her favorite beginning.

-

She kisses her Lover, the Ocean (the first and last to ever do so) on the beaches of Fuusha, a quiet moment filled with love. Her Love taste like saltwater and dreams and, dare she say it, the sea, and Makino finds it is her favorite thing.

It’s odd to kiss a being with only a semi-corporeal form, but Makino doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind anything about her lover.

She’s simply in love with sea, like all those who see her are.

She’s just more special than most.

_I Love you,_ the Ocean says, and Makino says it back.

“And I love you.”

_Shishishi!_

“Be _free,”_ she says, a plea for her too look after their child and kisses her again.

Yes.

She loves this beginning most of all.

-

Six months later when Luffy has declared War on the government and saved several kingdoms already, a supernova in his own right and the only one backed by the Ocean herself (how she wonders how his crew reacted to _that)_ a familiar face walks into the bar.

“Guess the storm came, aye Makino?” Shanks says, his crew filing in after him. Makino laughs, loud and bright.

“Sesese! Of course, _emperor,”_ she lilts, a grin tossed his way as she’s filling up sake cups already.

“Guess you heard! Couldn’t let anchor down after all, he needs a challenge when he goes out to sea.”

“Of course.” In the distance, Makino hears her lover happily splashing at the shore, rocking the _Red Force_ in the bay.

“Say, Makino,” Shanks begins to tease in that way of theirs from long ago, “Got a kiss for me?”

“Nope!” She says cheerily in return.

“Oh?” He expected it, of course.

“I’m taken now.” _That_ Shanks did not expect.

“By who?”

Makino smiles at him, the kind of smile tigers give their prey, and points to the Ocean. “The Ocean.”

Shanks looks at the shore and –

_(It’s a funny look, the kind men get when they see a tsunami bearing down on their head with no hope of escape. The face goes pale and the eyes go wide, and nothing save for the Ocean has quite managed to produce this look.)_

_“Holy Shit!”_

_Shishishi!_

Fin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I hope you liked the story. This was posted for the One Piece Big Bang 2020! I hope you all enjoyed. A good majority of this was written in the last few days as quarantine kind of killed my writing streak for a bit, but I managed to get it posted in time!!
> 
> I had the honor of working with [captainsway](https://captainsway.tumblr.com/) as the artist for this fic which was super fun!
> 
> You can find the rest of the big bang fics [here](https://opbigbang.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and please check out [sway's art work for the fic!!](https://captainsway.tumblr.com/post/619588145247404032/title-mother-mother-ocean-i-have-heard-you-call)
> 
> the fic will also probably be going under revisions for the next few days but nothhing major just wanted to let you all know!
> 
> <3  
> \- Whirly


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